by John Horst
“Did you?”
“No.”
“When are you going to stop committing suicide, Marta?”
“What do you mean?” She was a little annoyed at the implication. “That’s a sin and a crime.”
“Yet you’re doing it.”
“Am not.”
“You know what the sin and crime is in suicide?”
“Sure.” She shrugged as if it was a stupid question. “It’s self-murder.”
“Yes, but the victim of the crime is not the one who dies.” He waited for her to look up at him. “It is the crime against the ones left behind. The loved ones who’ve loved the suicide. Rebecca and your grandmother and now Curtin, your parents, and me.”
“You’re talking nonsense. I don’t want to die. I like a little excitement, want to try things, there’s nothing wrong in that.”
“And you want to push the limits, take chances, put your heart out on a limb for the thrill of sensual pleasure. You are a conqueror, have something to prove. What is it, Marta? What is it that has made you hate so much?”
“Hate! I don’t hate.” She looked on at him, angry now. “What are you playing at? What business do you have asking me such things, you’re not Sigmund goddamned Freud. Take me back.”
“Not until you tell me.”
“I’m about full up of you telling me no! No one tells me no, goddamn you. Take me back.”
“Tell me first.” She was furious now and had a little tantrum, throwing the basket overboard along with the champagne and her glass.
“You goddamned men. I hate you. I hate all of you, I’m sick of you always so goddamned smug, looking at me like I’m a weak little kitten. You want me, yet you don’t have the guts to take me. Take me.” She began to unbutton her dress. He stopped her.
“No.”
“Fine then.” She pulled away from him, got the boom between them and stripped down. “I’ll swim back.” She dove in on the wrong side and had to swim around the stern, began making her way to shore. It was five miles and Pedro could think only of the shark from the previous day.
“Marta, please.” He thought about what to do, found a line and threw it, got it over her and pulled hard, dragging her back. He grabbed her, manhandled her and pulled her back into the boat. She was furious now.
“You son of a bitch.” She rubbed the rope burns on her legs. “Look at my legs, you goddamned brute bastard.” She wanted to hit him and he kissed her, held her gently in his arms and kissed her again. She finally broke down, cried and held him and poured out a dozen years of emotion that she’d bottled up, wouldn’t share, would not allow anyone to see all this time and Pedro waited, held her and said nothing and let her cry her cathartic cry until she needed him, needed him to say something or nothing or just continue to hold her.
“I’m sorry.” She finally got hold of herself.
“No need to be.”
“I never cry.”
“You should. A good cry is good.”
“Yeah, good for little weak girls.”
“I’ve had a good cry.”
“You have?”
“Many, in fact.”
“When?”
“When my wife died, dummy. When do you think? And when one of my men died. Gut shot, bled all over me, I cried. It took him so long to die.”
She held his face with the palm of her hand.
“I did bad things, Pedro.”
He smiled and wondered at what she could have done that was so bad. “I can’t imagine what.”
“Oh, you can say that again. You cannot imagine, Pedro. There is no way that you could imagine, not with the imagination of a madman, could you imagine.”
“Then tell me.”
“Rebecca and I, we aren’t sisters. I was a bandit. I lived with bandits for the first half of my life. The men were savages. They raped, murdered, and I was part of their band. I did things, Pedro. Things that people hang for. I’ve never been punished. And, I don’t know.” She lost color in her face, looked up at Pedro with the saddest face he’d ever known, sadder even than his mother’s when his wife had died. “I watched men rape and torture and just be horrible, and when I think of, you know, that, all I can think of is those men.” He got up and threw a towel over her shoulders, got her something to drink and gently dried her hair.
“So, this was, let’s see, when you were a little child? Perhaps ten?”
“Yes.” She dried her face as Pedro helped her with her dress. He got a couple of cigarettes and lit them, handing one to her. She smoked and it seemed to calm her down a bit.
“And Rebecca, she told you it isn’t horrible, that it’s a good thing, and you are losing her and everything is unraveling.”
“Yes.” She looked out at the water and the tears ran down her cheeks. “I’ve never been punished and this I guess is God’s way of punishing me.” She looked at Pedro, into his eyes. “I’m so unhappy. I’m always, always unhappy and angry and just miserable, Pedro. And I make everyone around me that way.”
“Except Rebecca.”
“Oh, she’s lucky. She’s been stuck with me for ten years. I’ve made her life hell. Now she’ll be rid of me, God bless her. God bless her for Curtin. I’m so dark, but she could pass for a white. She could have been the belle of Baltimore but she was stuck with me, her Indian nigger pretend sister.”
“Stop it!”
She looked up at him. Not used to so much force in his voice. It must be the voice he used when he commanded his men and it got her attention.
“Now, you listen to me, Marta.”
He sat down next to her and took her hand. “Do you know why children are not punished as adults?”
“Yes.”
“Do you? Do you know why?”
“Because they are not responsible for their actions. I understand, Pedro, I appreciate all that. But…”
“Stop and just shut up, Marta. Shut up for a minute and listen.” He took a breath and let it out. “I know a little more about you than you realize. Curtin told me. Told me what Rebecca told him about you. She said you were once a savage but you saved her life. Look, I don’t know why you did some things and not others, but you are judging yourself as if you were grown up. You were ten years old, Marta. God bless you for what good you did. That is remarkable, a miracle, a triumph. You did fantastic things. You saved many lives and you should be proud.”
She was embarrassed now. She did not know that she’d been spoken so highly of and by so many. She shrugged her shoulders up, self-consciously, as she used to do as a child.
“But I watched them. I watched them.” She teared up again.
“And it was horrible, but it wasn’t you. You must remember that, Marta. It was them, not you. It was them. And it wasn’t love-making you saw.” He thought for a moment, held up his hand. “What’s this, Marta?”
“A hand.”
“What’s it now?”
“A fist.”
“What’s the difference? I’ll tell you, it’s the actions of the person behind the hand, not the hand. You can use a hand to caress, heal, or punch and choke, that’s the point. The sexual act is the same. What you saw was rape, ugly, brutal rape. That is not the same thing as lovemaking. And there is even another level, fornicating and lovemaking. Many many people get caught up in that. Fornicating instead of lovemaking, it’s empty, sad and I don’t want you to fall into that trap. The two are not the same thing, Marta, trust me, especially not the same thing when you love your partner. I can tell you that. I can tell you that for certain.” He felt a little silly now, being the confidante. It was not in his nature to be so tender, so expressive.
“You loved your wife.”
“Every day.” It was his turn to cry now. “I miss her so much, Marta.”
She cried again and looked up. “Why are you so good to me? Why is everyone so good to me?”
He kissed her on the head. “Because you are good, Marta. You’ve got a big heart and you’re smart and funny and so beautiful.
Remember, men are mostly fools when it comes to a beautiful woman. They’ll do anything for a woman who’s beautiful.”
At that she managed a smile, then a grimace. “I’m so tired.” And she was. She was exhausted from fighting and crying and being up all night. She had a terrible headache. He led her to the bow and got her to lie down. She slept while he sailed back to the hotel.
VI Subterfuge
The last leg of the trip, on to Tampico was spent in her room. She’d exhausted herself, slept fitfully, awoke often and every time she did it reminded her of the fact that Rebecca would never ever share her bed again. It was inevitable but, nonetheless, she’d never prepared herself for this time. They were always together and Rebecca was the reason why Marta enjoyed some relative happiness since her freedom from the bandit gang.
Del Calle understood and gave her the space she needed. She was awestruck by him, how he handled the incident on the sailboat, she could tell that he knew that she was strong, also knew that she was in the crisis of her life, but most importantly knew that leaving her to rest and work it on her own was best thing for her now. She wondered at his absence, though. She wondered why he hadn’t knocked on her cabin door. She missed him desperately.
She had so much self-doubt these days. More than when she first went to live in Maryland with Abuelita and at the fancy girls’ school. That was a terrifying time, too. The other girls were so far along in their studies, and Marta was so ignorant. Ignorant in academia, ignorant in the ways of polite society and she stood out, with her dark skin, like a beacon. She knew that she didn’t fit in the world of the Walsh’s, yet they welcomed her, protected her and did so in such a way that she felt like family, not some charity case, not like some sociology experiment.
She remembered reading about the little monkeys rich ladies would have to occupy and entertain them back in the old days and she often felt like that. She was Rebecca Walsh’s little trained dark monkey, but that was all in her mind. No one of the Walsh family ever looked upon her as anything less than one of the family. She loved them all so much and never stopped appreciating what they’d done for her all these years, yet she could not stop feeling like a burden, and an outsider.
And now her Rebecca was going to go away. Rebecca was the strong one, not Marta. Marta pretended, Rebecca lived it. And Rebecca never, ever abandoned her adopted sister. Rebecca was loyal to her through all the years. Marta remembered at least a half dozen times, suddenly remembered, as Rebecca would not let on at the time, but she remembered all the opportunities lost to Rebecca. Rebecca invited to San Moritz, but not Marta, Rebecca declined. Rebecca invited to Rome, not Marta, and on and on. Rebecca was always so good about it. She’d come up with an excuse, but never say, if Marta can’t go, then I can’t either. She’d never ever do that to her sister, either. Rebecca would never let on that Marta was holding her back.
She’d look over at the empty pillow and cry and think about what life would be like now that Rebecca was gone. She thought about living in adjoining houses, being together, finding a husband and settling down and raising a family with Rebecca’s family, but it didn’t seem good enough, it didn’t seem that it could ever fill the void that she was feeling now.
She dreamed a little and some were good dreams. She dreamed of Del Calle. He was a good man. She felt ashamed of calling him a galoot. He was not a galoot, he was smart and sensitive and kind. She had dreams of all the good men in her life, there were so many good men in her life. She thought about all of them, first the old man, then her uncle Alejandro del Toro, and of course her adopted father, Arvel Walsh, and uncle Bob, and Dick Welles, and now Curtin and the strange aborigine man Billy Livingston and the handsome as all hell Dan George.
They were men. And she didn’t hate them. But why, when she fantasized about doing it could she only see the rapes? Why? She knew that love could be tender and good, she held up her hand, held it flat, then made a fist. Del Calle was right, sex could be bad and it could be good, he was right, she knew he was right. But to think about the act made her ill. It was like awakening from a bad dream, and then, every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was the ugly dream. It was not really awakening from the dream at all, it was just a continuation of the dream and the dream was a nightmare that lasted a lifetime and made her want to never go to sleep and this is what she was feeling about being with men.
She thought about having a baby, too. Thought about Rebecca. She was going to get pregnant, no doubt. No one could do it that many times and not get pregnant and she worried about Rebecca so much. When she was with the bandits, they had so many babies and so many were sick and so many of the mothers died in childbirth. The curandera was mostly to blame. Her absurd rituals, forcing the women through childbirth, applying her potions, carrying out her ridiculous mindless acts. She caused more deaths than anything else.
She’d forgotten so much about her bandit life and now, in the past three days, it all came back to her. All came rushing in from the recesses of her brain and scared and worried her so. Del Calle’s wife died giving birth. Did they have a curandera at the birth? Did they have curanderas in Puerto Rico, or was his baby born in Maryland? Maybe at the naval hospital. Maybe with the best care in medicine and she still died. She was so afraid for Rebecca now. She suddenly hated Curtin, sticking the thing in her, the bastard. He was going to impregnate her then she’d give birth and die and he’d go on and find another and do it again and again.
She cried again and looked at the clock. It was the last night at sea. She didn’t want to lie there anymore, wallowing in self-doubt, wallowing in self-pity. The men were good, both Curtin and Del Calle were good and men were good. Not all men, of course, but so many were good. She sat up and felt the floor. She was so weak from worry and lack of food as she had not eaten in more than a day. She slowly got up, got herself together and prepared.
Pedro del Calle had time to think as well. He thought mostly about Marta. She was the most confounding young woman he’d ever met. She was fascinating. He checked on her half a dozen times during her marathon sleep, locked away in her cabin. He even had Rebecca check in on her several times.
Rebecca was good to him. She was a lovely creature and Pedro could see why Marta loved her sister so. She was likely the most selfless, most loving person he’d ever known. She smiled at Pedro, smiled at him as if she’d possessed all the knowledge of the ages, smiled at him like some mythical goddess who’d recognized the pain and folly brought on by unrequited love. At one point when he was particularly worried Rebecca looked on at him, touched his face gently with the palm of her hand and held it, said, “She’ll be fine, Pedro. I know she’ll be fine.” And that was the way with Rebecca Walsh, she was old, old for a nineteen year old girl and kind and wise.
They all sat together for the last dinner of the cruise. Curtin and Rebecca now so comfortable, like an old married couple. They were soul mates, perfectly enmeshed, as if this had been planned for them all their lives and it had finally come to fruition.
Marta could see it. She felt better seeing her sister so happy, but it soon happened again, the feeling down deep, the sense of foreboding, she looked on at Curtin and suddenly felt regret, even a little ill. He was leaning forward, holding Rebecca’s hand on the table, a friendly handshake. She now sported a beautiful engagement ring, a ring that someone of Curtin’s status should never be able to present, but there it was and Marta felt pained again that Rebecca would not show it off to her, that she had not beaten down the door, shoved it in her face, showed her the glorious prize and token of the young man’s love. She started to make a comment then held her tongue. She’d taken a couple of glasses of wine quickly and this was uncharacteristic for Marta as she liked always to be in control. She saw how stupid alcohol made the savages when she was a child and avoided it except for during the most special occasions. Tonight was the exception and it had the expected effect. She became angry at Curtin again.
“So, when will you be making an honest woman of my
sister?”
They all felt the barb. Del Calle looked at his hands. Rebecca spoke up before Curtin could come up with any kind of reply.
“That’s ugly, Marta.”
She knew it, felt sorry for saying it. She didn’t know why she said such things, then went on.
“Well, are you at least attempting to keep her from becoming pregnant?” She looked on at Curtin, now red-faced, he was embarrassed and becoming angry. He sat forward in his chair as Marta continued.
“She’s pretty frail you know.” She glanced over at Pedro. “You might end up killing her, like old Pedro did to his wife.”
“That’s enough, Marta!” Rebecca reached over, grabbed the wine glass from her sister’s hand. She looked her in the eye. “That’s enough, Marta.”
Marta pulled her hand away, stood up. “I’m sick and tired of people telling me no, or that’s enough, or to stop or shut up or whatever…I’ve had about enough of you all.”
She stormed out, leaving the inevitable pregnant pause. Rebecca grabbed Pedro by the hand. “I’m sorry, captain,” then on to Curtin, “I’m sorry both of you. She’s having a time now. She’s really not like this you know?”
“Understood.” Curtin was calming down. He didn’t like the fact that he was now the wedge driven between the two, but he was. Del Calle swallowed hard. It was a terrible insult to him as well. He’d thought many times that he in fact was responsible for his wife’s death and he didn’t need to hear it from Marta right now.
Rebecca sat at the edge of the bed and began dressing. Curtin rubbed her back. “Going to go have a talk with her?” She nodded. “I’m sorry, Rebecca.” He sat up and kissed her neck. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” She smiled and thought how much she’d rather lie back down next to him.
“For being so damned selfish. I’ve taken all your attention and that was very bad of me.” He kissed her shoulder as she put her stockings on.