Fruit of the Drunken Tree

by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

  The man spent a lot of time cooking. He made little stands out of tin containers and put large chunks of meat on top. He stared at the flames licking the flesh. He turned the slab of meat every five minutes, waiting for some specific color to emerge. This was something Papá had never done.

  The man refused to meet the other refugees, so Mamá asked me to bring the man to the library with me, but when he saw any South American, he tensed up and wanted to get out of there. I guessed he was afraid of getting captured again. We found him a psychologist and I bided my time to share with Mamá my suspicions. We all took extra shifts so that the man could go talk to the psychologist about what had happened to him.

  It occurred to me that a pretender couldn’t be a pretender with everyone. The pressure of faking would eventually beg for release. I was sure if anything, the pretender would say something to the psychologist. As I waited I spent my days at the library, trying to discover the ins and outs of DNA tests. I read about how saliva could be tested—there were remnants of a person’s saliva on postage stamps, the rims of coffee cups, and these could be isolated and tested for a match. But most hospitals did paternity tests with blood.

  * * *

  A month after the man had arrived, I went to see the psychologist. I didn’t want to make a formal appointment, so instead I went to her office and sat in the waiting room. As she greeted diverse clients, opening her door just a crack, I saw she wore kitten heels and a skirt suit, and her hair was dyed red and curled tight. She never seemed to break a sweat even though it was warm. Mamá said she was Cuban. It was the end of the day when she came out and saw me sitting there. She was startled and held on fast to her keys. I told her not to worry and told her who I was. I said I just wanted to know if the man called Antonio Santiago had revealed to her that he was a pretender. The woman gazed at me with a mixture of concern and pity and she let the hand holding the keys fall to her side. She reached out her hand to me. “Let’s go in my office, I can make you some tea.”

  She told me to call her Ms. Morales and in her office, with the big palm growing out of a pot, she heard all the instances in which the man had revealed himself to be someone else. She heard all my proof and theories, and when I was quiet, she was quiet too. She regarded me, and then she leaned against her lap. She told me she wasn’t supposed to, but she wanted to satisfy my doubts. She took out a file and opened it. “Here is the first day I talked to your father—is it true he once killed a boa?” I didn’t answer, so she retold to me what he had said to her: she described his feelings of powerlessness when Galán had been shot, his feelings of failure when the crossfire with the helicopters had taken place. I told Ms. Morales those were stories the pretender could have easily gotten off the real Papá when they were both imprisoned by the guerrillas, and Ms. Morales asked if I knew that Papá had been kidnapped by a few of his workers, that the oil site where he worked had been infiltrated and he hadn’t realized it until the last second.

  Ms. Morales said, “He knows you stole that Luck bottle you took when you were little.”

  I opened my mouth, wanting to say something, but not knowing what, and then Ms. Morales was pulling out a calendar, saying she thought I should start seeing her too, and then I was crying, telling her I wanted a DNA test, and in response she wrote me a prescription for a drug.

  Ms. Morales made me sit in her waiting room as she called Mamá to come and get me. After some minutes, Ms. Morales opened her door a crack and told me Mamá would be there to pick me up in an hour; I was free to sit in her waiting room or in her office. I thanked her and stayed put. I picked up a magazine. I thought Mamá would be angry at me, but when she arrived her face was blank. I thought we would be going home, but instead we rode a series of buses to a hospital, and there Mamá told a nurse she wanted a paternity test.

  I was silent as the nurse took a swab from the inside of my cheek and Mamá gave her a comb that belonged to the man I said was a pretender. When the nurse disappeared behind a door, I told Mamá I had saved money for the test, and she told me to be quiet, she did not care how many payments it took to put this to rest.

  I took the little pills Ms. Morales prescribed for me. They made me sleep and when I was awake they made me groggy. It was hard to pay attention. Ms. Morales gave me another prescription and this time the pills hurt my stomach, but they didn’t slow my thinking, which I liked. Two weeks after I changed pills, the hospital called to say the paternity test had been a positive. I held the phone speechless and when the woman on the phone asked if I was there, I just hung up.

  I sat down. I cried, knowing that what I had wanted was a return to normal, but there would never be a return to normal. Papá was gone. In his place was this man whose cheekbones cut hard into his skin, whose burnt-dark color and malnutrition were still present even though he no longer lived in a jungle. This man who allowed me to hold his hand and sob onto his shoulder, even though it made him anxious to be so close, so near to anyone. I needed to learn how to live with this new man, to negotiate a relationship with his body that was not the body I knew.

  * * *

  When Mamá saw Petrona’s letter, she told me to get rid of it before Papá saw. That’s the only thing she said after we sat in silence staring at the photograph on our stoop. Papá was inside doing what he always did in the afternoon—staring at the television without actually seeing.

  I nodded. Ours was such a small space I couldn’t burn the photo inside; everyone would smell, everyone would see. I waited until it was late at night. I got out of bed and put on my sandals. I went to the edge of the parking lot, and behind random cars I crouched down and brought out the envelope, the letter, the photo. I rolled my thumb on a lighter until it sparked and then I dipped the envelope and letter into the fire. I watched Petrona’s words disappear. There’s a paved road to the invasión now. I am growing cabbages, let—

  As I watched her handwriting disappear, I thought about the date I knew was printed on the back of the photograph. I calculated that the baby had to be five years old now.

  I took up the photograph and fed it to the small flame. Gorrión, Petrona, the baby, fading into the orange-dark, curling paper.

  What would our lives be like had Petrona remained just another girl with fleeting appearances in our family album, whose name we couldn’t recall? If I had said something to Mamá or Papá back when I could, could I have spared Petrona the choice that was forced upon her? Maybe if I got Petrona fired earlier, she would have escaped being drugged with burundanga as Julián told us she’d been. She would have escaped her belly being filled with bones. Now the same silence that had been her undoing was the only thing I had left that I could still bestow upon her, whom I loved. I daydreamed of her cabbages, and my silence about her was like an eternal burning.

  I didn’t tell Papá that Petrona was raped.

  I didn’t tell Cassandra I had written to Petrona and that she had written back.

  I didn’t correct Mamá when she assumed the photograph Petrona had sent was a new photograph. I didn’t tell her it was actually printed the year we fled Colombia.

  I didn’t tell Mamá that the man in the photograph was Gorrión.

  I was the only one with all the pieces. I was the only one that knew that Petrona had made a home with a man who had betrayed her, that she had chosen to keep the baby, that this new life she had fed from her breasts was something I had to make up to her and the only thing I could do was keep silent about what I knew. After all, who am I to judge? As her photo burned, I thought: even oblivion is a kindness.

  Petrona

  Only three times in my life did a letter arrive bearing my name.

  One time it was a letter from the city morgue.

  It was a photocopy of a form with typewritten information, signatures, and city seals.

  Name: Ramón Sánchez.

  State: Deceased.

  Age
: 12.

  Occupation prior to death: Guerrilla member.

  There was a note in the envelope too. Dear Petrona Sánchez, Our most sincere condolences for the loss of your loved one. It was signed by a policeman. It felt important that I was being addressed by a policeman. Mami tore the letter to pieces. Asesinos all of them. She flung the paper in the air, my name printed on that nice paper gone.

  Another time, it was a Christmas card from Aurora. The card was decorated with red glitter that came off on my finger when I rubbed it. Aurora could have given the card to me in person the year she went to live with Uriel and his wife, but she wanted to give me a surprise. She bought an envelope and paid for the stamp.

  The third one was this letter from the United States. Nobody in the Hills had received a letter from the United States so the mailman didn’t leave it with the rest of the mail at the pharmacy. Instead he climbed the Hills to give it to me. Along the way he showed it to a few women washing clothes by the path. Look, ever see an international letter? See how many stamps. The women were curious. Who’s it for? they asked, then they ooh-ed and ahh-ed when they saw. Or that’s what Julián told me later.

  The mailman found me crouched doing laundry by my hut. I had reconstructed it from the heap Mami had left before she disappeared into the streets, the heap that people in the Hills refused to throw out or burn because they thought a curse would come down upon anybody who touched it. I built a nicer home.

  The mailman rapped his knuckles on a nearby tree to get my attention. He widened his eyes and fanned a thin envelope in the air. This came for you from the United States. I wiped my hands dry on my dress and took the envelope. I stared at the name. You have family over there? It was Chula’s handwriting. It’s a girl I used to know, I told him. He took a step closer, averted his eyes but creeped his ear toward me. And what could she want?

  I went through the curtain inside my hut without another word and out the back door to the garden. I sat down on the rocking chair. What would Gorrión do if he saw the letter? I was thankful I was alone. My son, Francisco, named after my father, was at school, and Gorrión was driving a truck to the coast for my brother Uriel. I could destroy the letter before Gorrión returned. I still had some weeks.

  I had expected such a letter for many years, and now that it was here, I couldn’t bring myself to rip the envelope open. For days I left it tucked in the band of my underwear. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know what Chula had to say.

  One day after dusting the hut I sat on the floor of my kitchen. I took the envelope out. Chula had used a series of stamps with a picture of a man swinging a bat. The ink with my name had begun to run. The envelope was wrinkled and thin from being so close to my skin. I took the letter out. I didn’t understand anything the first time I read it, and had to go over the same words many times. Slowly I pieced things together.

  In the Hills we had code words. We called the guerrillas encapotados. We spoke of la situación. Cómo está la situación? and if somebody said Mal, muy mal, we knew to stay indoors because there was something underfoot with the encapotados or the paras or the army. Salt was Chula’s word for the aftershock. I knew her father had been let go. The people in the Hills said as much.

  Everyone remembered the day the mother and the two girls who had come for my Communion came looking for me after I disappeared. They were covered in mud, the people in the Hills said. Serves them right. The people in the Hills told the story like it was a folktale. When there’s a tempest, it comes down on all sides equally—can you believe that’s what the rich woman said? The people in the Hills loved that part of the story, where they could let their derision for la Señora Alma really come through. The rich woman said this to a mother who had lost three children and whose house had just fallen down. Of course, the rich only see their own pain—aren’t they living outside the country now, with their health, with a job? And where’s Doña Lucía? In the streets, lost her mind.

  I knew what the people of the Hills said about me too. Poor Petrona. Poor woman without a memory.

  * * *

  It’s true that after Doña Fausta found me abandoned in the lot, I didn’t remember who I was. Doña Fausta named me Alicia and told me the story of how she had found me, like it could help me remember the before. As I flinched with a fever from infected wounds, she told me how she was on her way home one night, when she glanced into the empty lot by her house. There were fireflies that night and she was watching them light up the grass when she saw a body. It was a bruised, dead body. The girl was beat up and her panties were soiled and had been pulled on over her jeans. Within three steps, she saw the chest was moving with breath.

  Doña Fausta dragged me to the road and then she got a wheelbarrow and carted me to her house. She liked to say the fireflies were God lighting her way to me. She got me a little pendant made of tin in the shape of a firefly that she bid me to wear even though it stained my skin blue. I didn’t like the pendant. I thought the fireflies were filthy animals, little flying specks attracted to the smell of men on my crotch.

  I was four months pregnant when I remembered the Hills. I saw in my mind the orange hills, the path up the steep. I knew how to get there, but nothing more. Doña Fausta and I went together. We climbed and climbed and I asked everyone we came across, Do you recognize me? Do you know who I am? People stared. Nobody answered. I know this is where I lived, I told Doña Fausta. We got close to a ridge. We stood in a playground, staring at a tall retaining wall, hearing the sound of cars on the other side, waiting and hoping for something to return to me, but nothing did. I cried in frustration, thinking, I know this is where I lived, how come I couldn’t remember; then a black man ran up and hugged me, sobbing. I froze in his arms. Petrona, thank God, he said against my neck.

  I stared at the slope of the hills, wondering if Petrona was really my name.

  When he let me go, I searched his face, So you really know who I am?

  He pulled on his nose. He said, Petrona, yes, of course, yes. He looked into my eyes. You don’t know who I am?

  I shook my head no. He told me his name was Gorrión, that he was my boyfriend, that he’d been taking care of my family, and he’d been searching for me everywhere. I looked at his face and wondered if this was a face I could love. His eyes paused on my stomach. He glanced at Doña Fausta. He lowered to his haunches, staring at my stomach.

  Is it yours?

  He stood, staring at me, staring at my stomach, and then he nodded. Yes, he said. You were pregnant. We were going to have a baby, and he held me again. I felt the thump of his heart when he hugged me, that’s how astonished he’d been.

  * * *

  There was one photograph of me holding my newborn, Francisco, Gorrión standing behind me. In this photograph I had no memory of the before. My home was a hill of rubble, so I stayed with Gorrión’s mother, who made me teas and broth. She was a small woman, startling white hair gathered in a knot at the nape of her neck. Gorrión said we got married just before I went missing, though when I first met him in the Hills he had introduced himself as my boyfriend. I guessed since we were newlyweds, he wasn’t used to calling himself my husband. His mother cried bitterly, Why would you keep such a thing from me? I was sad I couldn’t remember our wedding. Gorrión proposed we have another ceremony. You and Mami can make new memories and we can leave behind your being mugged and turning up in a lot in the past, where it belongs. We can become a happy family. Gorrión’s mother smiled through her tears. You would really do that?

  Gorrión took me to my brother Uriel’s house. I didn’t remember Uriel. I didn’t remember Aurora, who was young and said she was my sister. I didn’t know what to say. I looked at the walls. There was a guitar in a corner. Finally little Aurora stood up and left. She brought back a dirty white bundle. When she unfurled it she looked steadily at Gorrión, then at me, then she said it was my wedding dress. I stood. It is? The empty dress hel
d my shape. It was like the shell cicadas shed and leave behind. I touched the soft material. Dust came away on my fingers. What happened to it? I asked. Little Aurora said, It got buried when our shack fell. But I found it and saved it for you. Little Aurora cried in fits. I didn’t know how to comfort her. She was a stranger to me.

  At the church, little Aurora carried the baby and threw rose petals on the floor. I stepped on the petals Gorrión had bought specially for the occasion. My wedding dress had been so dirty it took hours to get clean. We’d paid for it to be altered to my new shape. In the dressmaker’s living room, just a few blocks from the Hills, when I stepped into the dress, I saw flashes of another woman who took my hand. Her eyes saw through me. Who was she? I felt naked when she looked at me. I didn’t ask anyone who she was but I thought of her on my wedding day, my small steps echoing in that church, little Aurora with my baby, softly sobbing to the altar where the Father waited on us. I knew something was trying to speak to me, and I looked to the tall ceiling of the church feeling shame, because there was this woman with her eyes sinking like daggers into me and then there were clouds with changing faces of men hovering over me. I shook my head and let all those visions drop from me and I knelt before the Father. Where did the visions come from? Maybe they were just dreams.

  In time the difference between a memory and a dream became clear.

  I remembered the things I was not supposed to.

  I understood Aurora’s fit of tears after she handed me my Communion dress, once given to me by la Señora Alma. I understood Aurora’s sobbing that echoed in the church as she walked ahead of me to the altar. She had chosen to lie to me to protect me. But I couldn’t tell her that I knew.