Sleeping Dragons

by Magela Baudoin; Wendy Burk; M. J. Fièvre

  My brother’s mission in life, then, was to teach them to drive; and their mission was to make sure nobody found out what they were doing. They planned it well, limiting themselves to brief excursions, fraught with nerves and adrenaline. On the day of the disaster, my brother turned the key in the ignition. The car lunged forward asthmatically because he’d forgotten to put it in neutral. He realized his mistake and turned off the motor, then took a few deep breaths to calm down. “Stupid,” he said out loud. He shifted into neutral before turning the key again. This time it worked. He shifted into first and took off slowly, driving forward about ten feet. Then he backed up, leaving the car right where it started. His friends followed suit. Josué went next; he was more of a natural driver. Marlon, alas, was not. The car groaned when he took the wheel because he struggled with keeping the clutch down while shifting into first.

  “Come on, let’s do this,” my brother said, summoning all of his force of personality. Marlon eased into the driver’s seat while the other boys encouraged him.

  Marlon knew he just had to go for it. “Okay… now!” he muttered as he successfully shifted into first, his knees trembling.

  “Take it easy,” Josué laughed, “your leg looks like it’s gonna fall off!”

  The street was practically deserted, like the streets always were in the middle of the afternoon. The sun beat down on the boys as intensely as if they were widows wearing mourning. Marlon’s T-shirt was wet at the armpits and around his chest. His forehead shone with sweat. “It’s time, we’re ready,” he said, in a steely voice. Josué and my brother shot each other a look. “Let’s do this”—Marlon raised his voice, resolute—“or are you gonna wuss out?”

  The street behind ours led to a grammar school and a police station, so traffic swelled during the rush hours, especially at dismissal, when it teemed with children and parking cars. Marlon decided to seize the moment and let loose.

  “Who’s scared?” he yelled, slapping the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.

  His words were met with silence. For a moment he saw himself utterly abandoned.

  “Who’s scared, dickheads?” growled my brother, coming to Marlon’s rescue.

  “Nobody!” the three of them shouted.

  My brother felt a little worried, in spite of how often they’d discussed this moment, but the idea of the open road called to him. It was the destiny they had dreamed of. After a flawless start, he pulled smoothly away from the curb, waving at our neighbor Micaela who was working in her store. She was my mother’s friend, so he knew Mom was going to find out sooner or later. He shifted into first gear and even switched into second, at exactly the moment when the acceleration made the transmission start to shake. He had made it practically all the way around the block when he slowed down to let a van pass, turned right, entered our side street, and braked abruptly at the curb. His legs were trembling too, he confessed to me later.

  Next up was Josué, who had never aspired to be the smartest, the best, or the most macho. “I’m nervous,” he blurted out. No one responded.

  Josué didn’t get the LeBaron started smoothly, but he did get it started, and he drove it around the block as sedately as if it were a horse-drawn carriage, without even needing to shift gears. When he made it past the grammar school, the street was already full of parked cars, but there were no kids in sight. My brother took a deep breath. Josué continued his journey around the block with infinite slowness, then stopped the car and jumped out as fast as if he’d been ejected.

  “My hands are all sweaty,” he said, drying them on his jeans. My brother looked at his face and burst out laughing. To tell the truth, it was nervous laughter.

  Marlon was next. He didn’t look excited and confident anymore. My brother said he was green, as if he were about to puke.

  “We can stop now, if you want,” my brother told him.

  But Marlon didn’t hesitate. He changed places with Josué. He didn’t take any deep breaths; he didn’t shift into neutral; he didn’t do any of the things they had carefully practiced. He didn’t even cross himself like the three of them always did before starting the car. He just yanked on the key. The car lunged forward but then got started. Marlon accelerated and prepared to shift gears. He even put on his blinker to turn right. He had that same look in his eye, my brother told me afterwards, that provoked so much pity in our mom.

  “Slow down, man!” Josué yelled. “You’re gonna get us all killed.”

  Instead of slowing down, Marlon floored it as he went into the turn. The car roared and reared, barely missing a bus, a motorcycle, a taxi, and even a horsecart. Then, from out of nowhere, a woman appeared, stopped dead in the middle of the road, holding two kids by the hand. It was too late to slam on the brakes. My brother jerked the steering wheel hard to the right. Josué gripped the front seat and Marlon gripped the dashboard. The front end of the LeBaron crashed into the front wall of the police station. Bricks from the wall rained down on top of the smoking hood, which was crumpled up like a ball of paper.

  Marlon turned around to make sure that my brother and Josué were still alive. His eyes looked like they were about to fall out of their sockets. His mouth flopped open but no words came out. My brother pushed him out of the car and then leaped out himself. “This is it, you’re not going to wuss out now,” he told him. Josué was the most composed of the three.

  “Calm down,” he said, “the cops are coming.” Just then the dismissal bell rang. In an instant they found themselves surrounded by shouting adults and screaming children. In my brother’s field of vision, all that existed were Josué’s gestures, the seats of the car exposed to view by the open doors, and the big wet spot on Marlon’s jeans: all that remained of his fear and, also, his courage. The police asked who was driving at the time of the accident. Marlon still couldn’t speak. My brother responded rapidly and mechanically, the same way he did when Mom interrogated him at home.

  “Me.” His voice shook and he swallowed hard.

  When the police brought the boys inside the station, they flooded them with questions, which all three of them answered without hesitation, as if they’d never learned on TV that they had the right to remain silent. They rapidly confessed who the car belonged to. The officer in charge wrote down “property of stepfather,” after Marlon spelled out his full name. Then they admitted that they had each driven around the block, and the officer said out loud, “without authorization.” My brother repeated that he was the one who was driving when they crashed, and that they’d never taken the car out before. The officer took this down and added “without human injury.”

  The police announced their intention to confiscate the car. This news filled Marlon with desperation. “Shit, shit, he’s going to kill me,” he said over and over, scrubbing his face with his hands and begging them not to take anything out of the car. “Why not, what’s in there that’s so important?” the officer asked. Josué hissed at Marlon, “Calm down, he can’t do anything to you while you’re in here.” But Marlon just sobbed inconsolably, “You don’t know what he’s like, he’s going to kill me!” The officer wrote this down in his little book. That’s when my brother lost his temper and told Marlon, “So die already and quit crying, you dick.”

  The neighborhood was in such an uproar that Mom and I, driving back from the hospital in the Renault, never made it to our house. Everyone was talking about it. Micaela waved frantically at my mom and we stopped in front of her store. As my brother had anticipated, she spilled the beans right away, providing an abundance of detail. Mom drove fast to the police station. “Holy God, Holy God,” she said over and over. I felt as if I had swallowed a stone.

  When we got to the police station, Mom asked for the officer on duty and heard him out with exquisite patience. “Are you sure my son was driving?” she asked, because that’s not what everyone in the neighborhood was saying. He explained that my brother himself had admitted it. Mom always knew how to act when things were starting to get ugly. The officer told
her that, thanks to the boys’ statements, he would be able to write his report quickly. Their parents could take them home after filing some paperwork and paying up. Josué’s father was off somewhere in the countryside with his horses, and Marlon’s stepdad was nowhere to be found. Politely, confidently, Mom told the officer that if she had to pay in order to take her son home, she would, but that she wanted to speak with him first. They let us go in while they finished inspecting the car. When we got to the cell, we saw Josué first; he was still on his feet and even waved hello to us. Marlon was huddled up in the corner with his head on his knees, while my brother was draped against the side wall of the cell. He swallowed hard when he saw us, and came forward. Mom grabbed his hands.

  “Jesus Christ, son, why did you say it was you?” she asked him, very quietly, pinching his arm hard. My brother didn’t try to pull away. He seemed to be searching for words.

  “Mom, please, let’s drop it,” he begged, looking across the cell at Marlon. She followed his gaze. Marlon’s eyelids were terribly swollen.

  “Just wait until we get home, this time you’re going to get red hot chiles.” My brother’s eyes started to water. Mom squeezed his hand, then said, letting her voice carry into the interior of the cell, “And how about you boys? Are you hungry? Can I bring you something for dinner?”

  Back at the front desk, the officer explained to us that there was a complication: their search of the car had revealed contraband. “This is the work of a professional,” he said. My brain began to fill up with images, like an old movie reel projecting scenes on the ceiling of our room at night. The police started searching for Marlon’s stepdad while Mom called the lawyer who worked at the hospital. Everything else really did unfold just like in a movie. Marlon’s mother dried her eyes and admitted what everyone else in the neighborhood already knew. Josué’s mom was as composed as he was. As for Marlon’s stepdad, it was like the earth opened and swallowed him up. They never found him, not that day, and not ever. Mom paid for the lawyer and the property damages with a loan from the hospital. Josué’s parents promised to pay their share, but before too long their family went back to Brazil. Marlon’s mother also left town, but that was because of my mom’s advice. And my brother escaped both the slipper and the chile peppers, but that’s a story we never talk about. Mom made us promise never to bring it up again, and when she died, so much time had gone by that we could barely remember.

  A BUENOS AIRES SUMMER SONATA

  ELENE TOOK CARE OF everything, as usual. She found two old ladies to rent me a room while I’m in Buenos Aires, enrolled in the class we had both wanted to take. Such are the hideous courtesies you derive from being at death’s door: she gave up her place to me when we realized we couldn’t afford the tuition for two. One more reason for me to be in her debt. At this point, I don’t know how much more I could possibly be in anyone’s debt. I’ll make a list, to spare her the trouble of making it for me, so at least I won’t be in her debt for that too. First, she left everything behind to move in with me. In her case, this was quite a feat, because it was her family, not mine, who were the inquisitors, ready to skin her alive in a cauldron of boiling oil. For me it was easy: I was older. My parents were hippies, and I suspect that they felt a secret satisfaction at being able to show off their ‘different’ daughter. Besides, being ten years older was always an advantage until now; it’s only recently that it’s become a bill to be settled, a divine retribution, a defeat of the flesh.

  Second, she left everything behind to let me be the one to shine: the fellowship, the foreign correspondent gig, the travel, with Elene trailing behind me. She left behind her studies at the conservatory to follow me and, although I never asked her to, no one remembers that anymore, not least of all because Elene is so considerate that she changes the subject if someone recalls with nostalgia what a great violinist she was and what might have been, if only … Third, she left everything behind, yet again, to save me from dying of fear while I went through chemo. It’s not a romantic exaggeration: Elene has done it all for me. And that fact, which never gave me anything except control, is destroying me now because I’m the one who needs her, and I can’t bear it.

  This was supposed to be a breather for us, but Elene won’t stop calling… She’s in hysterics about the cockroaches. That’s what I get for being an idiot: what business do I have trying to be funny? I had to hang up because I was about to kill her. The old ladies have therapeutic names: Remedios and Milagros—Remedies and Miracles.

  After lunch Remedios and Milagros got into an argument. Reme yelled and Mili refused to acknowledge her, until Remedios yelled louder, to back her into a corner, to control her, and only then did Mili answer, “Yes, Reme, I heard you!” It reminded me of my own fights with Elene, and I’m not going to say who was who. Poor things; they didn’t sell anything today. On top of that, the water heater broke. I went on washing the dishes as imperceptibly as I could, but as I was putting away the big griddle, I turned too fast and collided with the kitchen cabinet. The sharp end of the shelf rammed into my forehead—or, rather, my forehead slammed into the sharp end of the shelf—with the pithy violence of a hammer blow. Griddle on the floor; both women turning their focus to me. That’s how it is when you’re a guest. The two of them are exaggeratedly attentive.

  My accident proved to be Mili’s salvation as she slipped away with her bags. Reme, on the other hand, vented the remainder of her fury on me. “What on earth have you done?” she said, obviously still stewing about the cold water, while I clutched my head, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing.” I thought that this would be the perfect moment for a cockroach to appear and distract us both with the task of chasing and killing it. She would have emptied the bottle of roach killer over the bug, the countertop, the whole kitchen, all the while trying to convince me that it’s not because their house isn’t clean. But we both know the truth. That’s why, as soon as they go out for the day, I clean everything. I do it like a sprinter, bleaching every surface in the apartment, which thankfully is as tiny as a comma. I try not to linger in the kitchen, even though I know it’s the room that needs it most. But I can’t. It sickens me. The two of them know what I do while they’re out, but they don’t say a word. Why try to justify poverty? “It’s the summertime,” they explained to me today. In this heat, who wants shoelaces? Sometimes I pray for rain, just so that people will take off their sandals and wear shoes for a change. The problem is that it gets even hotter after it rains. I’ve never understood the law of large numbers, why it is that in a city as immense as Buenos Aires, they’re able to sell so little. The two of them swear it’s because the summer has been so hot, and because more people than usual have left the city. I want to believe this, but the state of their apartment suggests that their troubles have gone on for more than one summer. The walls are black with smoke, the floor is stained, the kitchen is a wreck, and you can see the yellow foam peeking out of the couch. It’s white. Or, it was white, because yesterday I bought a slipcover and put it on. Reme thanked me, just like a little girl. Milagros, for once, said something different: “Honey, is that how you see us?”

  If Elene had been with me, she would have reacted with the sideways frown, so unique to her, that used to make me feel ashamed for a few moments and that now, after so many years of our heroic partnership, isn’t even meant as a reproach, but only a sign of weary distaste. The weary distaste produced by things that will never change, and that it’s therefore useless to correct.

  I’m not sure if I should write about this, especially since I’m here for such a short time. Only twelve weeks. I’ve already been accused once of being an unreliable narrator, and of course Elene had to be there to remind me of it. I’ve never apologized for being a journalist, although sometimes maybe I should have; but since it’s not possible to just wander around writing down everything I see here, maybe I should convince myself that I’m making it up. That way I’ll be able to tell the story without guilt. After all, that’s why I came here: to pack away
the tape recorder and ‘write’ without being in a straitjacket, even if the literature class is little more than an alibi. Maybe it would be better to convince myself of the truth: I came here to ‘finish’ healing, as Elene says. But can you really be healed without first breaking down?

  I, who know what happiness is and who have always been a little sad for no reason, have promised myself (have promised her) to experience a ‘reawakening.’ It’s not every day that you survive cancer as well as the tender care of the one who loves you. That’s why I sit down every morning, at exactly the same time of day, to write. That’s how I convince myself that I’m not double-crossing her, that this summer is something more than an act of narcissism, that it’s a way for me to break free without jumping into the void. I left behind my job and a good salary. I left behind the perfect woman (so perfect she’s strangling me). I left behind all of my lukewarm comforts. I reconsider this last idea and decide it would be better to write, “I left behind all the comforts of boredom.” Yes, that’s why I came here, and even if I don’t achieve my goal, maybe this time around it’ll be the therapy that cures me of all my obsessions and neuroses, because at this point I could write a whole dissertation on phobias. But how can you forget something if you haven’t given it a name first?

  At times I feel miserable, absolutely miserable. Today I cooked up some pasta with basil-walnut pesto and mushrooms. Mili, who never eats, and who especially never eats lunch, ate some of this. She kept on stealing glances at the price sticker on the package of walnuts. I think maybe she felt guilty about not eating, maybe she said to herself, “Who knows when I’ll ever be able to eat something like this again?” The worst of it was that, right when I was starting to gloat a bit, out crawled the cockroaches. Some of them in the colander, some of them wobbling on the cups hanging from the wall, three more peeking out of the drain. Their size was between small and tiny. Reme tried to keep me from screaming; she took the utensils out of my hands while I attempted to wipe the expression off my face. Thinking about Elene, I poured roach killer down the drain. Of course, that was the end of the nice basil smell. Such admirable fucking restraint! Goddamn you, Elene.