Fruit of the Drunken Tree

by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

  “Yeah?” He hurried behind. His teeth seemed whiter and his tongue redder because there was a film of dark dust covering his skin. “I did my Communion years ago.” I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He was younger than I was; there was no way he had already done his First Communion. He turned and addressed Mamá, “Mother-in-law! How are you today? You’re a friend of Petrona’s?” He looked at Mamá’s box. “What are you carrying? Need help?”

  Petrona turned, her hands gripping the skirt. “I work for la Señora, Julián, now go away.” The skirt of her dress was now coated in orange dust, but it was actually nice the way it went from brick orange at the rim, lighter and lighter to satiny white.

  “What a travesty, Petrona, I thought we were friends.”

  Petrona kept climbing. He asked, “Are they going to your house?” Then he whispered to Mamá, “Mother-in-law, come say goodbye to me on your way down, sí? Don’t be mean.”

  “Sí, sí,” Mamá said, wiping her forehead on the shoulder of her shirt. “I’ll come and say hello.”

  “Your daughters too? You promise?”

  “Yes, yes, we’ll say goodbye.”

  The boy stayed behind, and I asked Mamá if she was really going to make us go back and say goodbye to that creepy little boy, and Mamá laughed. “Of course not, Chula. The trick with little boys from invasiones is to say yes to whatever they want only you tell them later—all the while you walk away. Isn’t that right, Petrona?”

  “Sí, it’s true. La Señora really did grow up in an invasión, didn’t she?”

  As we made it to a peak, we paused. Mamá set the box on the ground. I pinched at my sweater and pulled on the fabric to feel air against my skin. Having arrived safely, a weight lifted off of me. Down the steep, the little boy was standing still, looking up at us. A three-legged dog was panting by his side. “Here’s my house,” Petrona said, walking up to the shack immediately to our left.

  Petrona’s shack was constructed in a nice, simple way. The leftmost wall was made out of a series of doors, and the right wall was made out of mismatched slatted wood. There was a lilac bush next to it. From here, if I looked into the distance, I could see a cluster of shacks and then a small patch of dry land that had been made into an improvised soccer field. Behind that there was a tall retaining wall with barbed wire on top. The wall was about six meters tall and sleek, obviously put there so that the people of the invasión wouldn’t climb over. Above the wall to the left I saw the tops of wealthy condos that rose into the clear sky, and to the right, an imperious mountain.

  “Come in, Señora, my family is looking forward to meeting you.”

  “Come, girls,” Mamá said, and Petrona and Mamá disappeared behind a faded flower curtain that hung between the wall of doors and the wall of slatted wood. That was the front door. Cassandra and I walked up to the curtain but neither of us went it. Next to the curtain there was a plastic decoration hanging from a nail. I guessed it was one of the Christmas Magi. He wore a turban and held up a golden chest. The colors of the plastic Magus were faded, but deepened in hue wherever the plastic tucked in. There was twine holding up the curtain and this twine was tied to a post, which seemed to be an old city post meant to hold up electric wires but the wires were gone. The post seemed to be supporting the whole shelter.

  Then Cassandra pushed me and I was inside. Petrona’s family, surprised by my sudden entrance, started. I knew Petrona had nine siblings, but there were only her two older brothers and a young girl, all of them, I saw with disappointment, with a very distinct face and not a Petrona face as I once imagined. Cassandra snickered at my side and then Doña Lucía picked up Petrona’s hand. Everybody stared at Petrona, and Doña Lucía presented her like she was a decorated official: “My Petrona, look how beautiful! Just like a queen.” There were no windows, but there were gaps where the roof went from silver corrugated tin to transparent plastic, and the plastic let some light in. There were three plastic tables, a few stones, and many fresh flowers and potted plants. A metal wind chime tinkled in the back corner over two mattresses placed directly on the dirt floor. A small fan, the battery-powered kind, whirred next to the mattresses, setting the top of the sheets rippling like water. Opposite the mattresses, in the corner, there was an altar with lit candles and photographs. I wanted to look but Mamá put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m la Señora Alma, this is Cassandra and Chula, my two girls.” Cassandra and I smiled. We waved. Petrona’s brothers and sister smiled back. We kept our distance like we were at a border, none of us with papers. After a while, Doña Lucía said to her sons, “Don’t you have manners? Come help la Señora Alma with this box.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Mamá said as one of Petrona’s brothers lifted the box from the floor. “Put it somewhere nice where you can unpack. I’ve brought you some dishes, some kitchen stuff…Oh, and we picked up chicken and a cake! Be careful with the cake, it’s on top.”

  Petrona flipped her veil back and came over to us, leading her sister by the shoulders. “Chula, Cassandra, meet my little sister.”

  Petrona’s little sister had Petrona’s same caramel, almond-shaped eyes, but her hair was long and messy and blond.

  “I’m Cassandra, this is Chula, how old are you?”

  “Ten. You?”

  She was a year older than me, but I didn’t want to reveal that. “What’s your name?” I said.

  “Aurora.”

  I looked up at the roof. “It must be nice to have a silver roof—like you’re an astronaut.” I could tell this was the wrong thing to say because Aurora squinted, then looked away. “Where do you go to school?” Aurora didn’t look at me.

  “What do you do for fun?” Cassandra asked.

  “I play in the swings, I see my friends, we go hunt lizards.”

  “Lizards! Where do they live?”

  “We also go to a haunted place,” she said to Cassandra.

  “Oh, we love haunted places,” Cassandra said. “There’s a place in our neighborhood where you can actually see the Blessed Souls of Purgatory and there’s also a house with a witch.”

  “Really?” Aurora tucked loose golden hairs behind her ears and thought about this for a moment. “Well, us, in the haunted place here, we took a candle, and the wind was blowing like a Jesus apocalypse, but the candle didn’t go out.”

  Cassandra nodded. “That’s definitely the doing of a ghost.”

  In the kitchen area, where tall aluminum pots stood piled on the ground, Doña Lucía inspected the set of plates, forks, folding napkins, and glasses Mamá had brought.

  Petrona cut the cake and Mamá said to Doña Lucía, “Let’s use the plates I brought,” but Doña Lucía pushed Mamá’s plates aside, and fished around her cluttered place, saying, “I prefer to use my own.” Mamá smiled, like this wasn’t an insult and she turned her attention to Petrona. “What about some soda?”

  Cassandra, Aurora, and I sat on small rocks, the adults sat on cement blocks, and Petrona sat in a plastic chair. One of Petrona’s brothers didn’t have a seat and he was sitting on the ground eating the cake on his plate. “So tell us,” this brother said to Mamá. “Does Petrona behave when she’s over there?” Petrona’s two brothers had the same nose. Or maybe it was the same eyebrows. It was hard to decide which.

  I was about to take my first bite of cake when an old man came in. He was pale with black hair styled back and hanging from his neck was a little satchel, rugged and wrinkled like it was carrying a small corpse. I jumped up thinking he was a thief but Aurora pulled me down to the rock again. “That’s my Tío Mauricio. He never comes out of his house, but for special occasions. Anything you want—if you like a boy and the boy doesn’t like you back—my Tío Mauricio can fix.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Aurora turned her eyes to her plate and stirred the cake. The old man was staring at me.

  Mamá was saying,
“You really didn’t think we were coming to visit you?”

  “Well, you know how city people are, always with their stomachs on their forehead; they wouldn’t show their nose on this mountain if they could help it.”

  “You’re prettier than they say,” one of the brothers said to Mamá.

  “Me? But you’re not far behind!” The brothers laughed, and Mamá went on, “But come, come. What happens when it rains? How do you make it up and down that mountain?”

  The old man edged closer to me and lowered himself to a crouch. I didn’t look at him and held my breath. I was sure he was a witch. I tried not to think about anything. I stared at Mamá. Mamá was tapping her foot on the ground. Maybe she was as impatient to leave as I was.

  “Will you give me your hand?” the old man said.

  Mamá had told me to never give my hand to a witch, but I was staring at the corpse-shaped necklace and didn’t know what else to do.

  “I’m just happy you came, Señora,” Petrona was saying. “All the neighbors must be so jealous. Nobody believed me when I said you were coming.”

  The old man returned my hand and when I looked at it, there was the shell of a snail on my palm. Black grains of dirt clung to it. “I found it today, isn’t it pretty?”

  When I lifted my eyes I was confronted with Mamá’s gaze.

  “Señora,” Petrona said. “This is Tío Mauricio. He wanted to meet you.”

  “How do you do,” Mamá said. The little groove above her lip was tense.

  The old man stood. “If you ever have trouble,” Petrona said, “Tío Mauricio is who we all go to for help. Isn’t that right, Tío?”

  Mamá glanced at me then back at the old man. “Trouble like what?”

  “Any problem.” He dusted his palms. “I have great aim. From a roof, I can take down two.”

  Mamá smiled briefly. “Well, if I would have known you were going to be here, I would have taken a class; my aim is terrible.”

  “That’s why you need me. Look, all I need is a photograph, where they live, I have someone who follows them, and then we give them a good scare.”

  “My uncle is so good,” Petrona said. “All the money he makes, he is saving to give my mother a proper house. You know, out of brick.”

  “Or if somebody hits your car and they don’t want to answer,” the old man continued. “Easy. We take the car down, we sell it, we divide the loot half and half.”

  Mamá turned to Petrona. “How nice for you, Petrona, to have someone so useful in your family. My family, on the other hand, is filled with lazy snakes, I have a sister––”

  This is how Mamá changed the subject. I didn’t know what to do with the snail’s shell. I couldn’t drop it on the ground because he would see it, so I clutched it against my palm. Maybe it would break. Aurora scooted closer to me. “When I take my First Communion, I am going to wear a dress like Petrona’s but it’s going to have an even longer train that’s going to go on behind me for like two meters.”

  “That sounds like the best dress.” I wanted to tell her it was the worst dress because it would get dirty, especially because of where she lived, but I didn’t want to say the wrong thing. The shell started to cut my skin.

  “I’m going to have shoes made out of glass like in that fairy tale.”

  “Cinderella?”

  “No, that’s not the one.”

  “Petrona, stand up and show us your dress again,” Doña Lucía was saying. “Do a twirl so everyone can see. You really made it, Señora Alma?”

  “Yes,” Mamá said. “My mother taught me how.”

  I narrowed my eyes, suddenly remembering Mamá had bought Cassandra’s and my Communion dresses from a store. I beheld Petrona with a twinge of envy as she twirled, then I was embarrassed. Didn’t Petrona deserve a dress made just for her? I looked away, squeezing the snail shell in my hand. Petrona’s brothers clapped and when I looked again, the veil was dragging over Petrona’s shoulder and her skirt was filled up with air. Suddenly a small boy came tumbling through the curtain, tripping on the empty box we’d brought and left by the door. The little boy laughed on his knees and hands shaking without sound. Then another boy came through the curtain, his hair curled over his eyes. He stopped at the door. “Who the hell are these people?” No one spoke and the shack filled up with the smell of cement glue. Everything was still for a moment—then Petrona’s eldest brother rushed at them and the two boys took off, and Doña Lucía was screaming for Petrona’s brother not to hurt them, and then we heard snickering outside, followed by more yelling. Then Petrona’s second brother went out.

  “It’s the bad influence of the invasión,” Doña Lucía said.

  “Why don’t your older sons help?” Mamá said, like she understood what had just happened. “Isn’t there something they could do?”

  Doña Lucía shrugged. “They have problems of their own. The police don’t come up here. If it wasn’t for the encapotados, I don’t know where we’d be. They’re terrible people, but at least they try to keep our kids from getting hooked on drugs.” She stared at the ground for a moment, then said, “My Fernandito made friends with one of those desgraciados, drug addicts. And now look at him. He’s dragged his other two little brothers with him. Of course, children are so stupid. What can I do? I got gangrene and asthma after they took my husband and my two eldest and we had to flee. I light candles to the Virgin.”

  She gestured to the corner with the candles. From where I sat I could count four photographs. I did the math in my head: Doña Lucía had said three of her sons were addicted to glue, and three of Petrona’s siblings were present. Three photos were for Petrona’s remaining siblings—but who was in the fourth photo?

  Petrona ran her gloved hands on her forearms, her mind elsewhere. I understood the fourth photo must have been her father. My heart broke for Petrona. I thought about her little brothers. I didn’t really understand how glue could make people addicted. I had seen children in the street many times breathing glue in paper bags. There were so many of them in Bogotá. They looked up with glassy, winded eyes. They slumped in the corners of the street, around the gates of malls and restaurants, begging for money. I stared at the curtain, listening for what was happening out there.

  When it was time for us to go, we said goodbye to Petrona’s family. Petrona’s uncle mimed at lifting an imaginary hat from his head, and Mamá mimed at bowing down holding the imaginary ends of a skirt. Outside, we paused to look down at the climb we had ahead of us. Petrona said it would go by quickly. I stared at the roofs of the dwellings in the invasión—silver and clear corrugated roofs not secured I could see from this angle, but weighed down by piles and piles of brick. If I blocked the invasión with my hand and looked straight ahead, the landscape was Bogotá as I knew it: a sprawling, modern place with paved streets and high buildings and decorated balconies knitted with fog.

  Petrona came back down with us most of the way. She held my hand firmly, the lace of her glove coarse against my palm. I wondered again where Petrona’s boyfriend was. I felt scared. “Did you have a nice time, niña?” Petrona asked.

  “Yes.” I stared down at the rim of Petrona’s dress dragging on the orange dirt. Petrona stopped and told us she would keep watch as we made our way down. I slipped my hand out of hers and and gave her a hug and skipped down. Below, our car was still beneath the palm. When we reached it, I turned and looked up. Petrona was still there, standing at the terrace in the hill where we had encountered the first shacks. The tall orange hill rose behind her and the white veil lifted in the wind and her skirt was rusted at the bottom. Suddenly, I wanted to stay. “Chula,” Mamá called. “Hurry up.” I trotted up to Mamá and I got into the car. Mamá started the car and put it in gear. The car was not yet in motion when she spoke to me through her gritted teeth, “That uncle of Petrona is a bad man. Show me. What did he give you? What did he say?” />
  Petrona

  The bruise on my eye was still there when I did my Communion but la Señora Alma covered it with green paint, then peach. She made me look pretty, with a thin line of black along my lashes, and a pink dusting of powder on my cheeks. I felt like a princess, Chula and Cassandra waiting on me, bringing me water, fluffing my skirt, playing with my veil. There was a brightness I had never felt before. I held my hands, feeling so light on my feet, so full. Then I would catch sight of my dress as my white, gloved hand brushed against it and I’d think, Everything borrowed. Just a girl from an invasión. The priest said inner light and peace came from living your life for others. I held on to this thought and quieted. I thought of little Aurora. The way her blond baby hairs came up like airy roots by her temple.

  At the church, I was the oldest girl taking First Communion. Nine-year-old girls looked me up and down and sideways and giggled meanly. I stared at the priest, and thought about my Papi long gone, how he would have liked to see me in this church wearing this pretty dress, how he would have liked to tell me, See, Petro, how honest work pays off. I lit my Communion candle from the flame of the little girl next to me, thinking about Papi’s white eyebrows. They were so thick and wiry. I bowed my candle to the left for the girl there to light her candle. I knew that if Papi was here, I would lie to him too.

  My days were filled with cleaning and cooking and pretending to go to sleep. I tossed and turned in the mattress in our hut in the Hills whenever I was home. At the Santiagos’ I bunched up my clothes on my bed, a fake body to account for my real body—which was so good at hiding manila envelopes, so good at speed-walking and advancing on all fours through the broken part of the fence, so good at standing in the dark where the streetlights did not reach, so good at holding the manila envelope out over the street for the approaching man on the motorcycle, who sped by and plucked the envelope right out of my hand like a thunderclap.