by Laura Resau
I’m speechless, standing in the middle of the living room. The door of my prison is open and I’m too scared to leave. I bury my face in my hands. “I don’t know. I’m so confused. I tried to leave before and they wouldn’t let me.”
Matilde’s face is blazing. “Virginia, listen to me. What are they going to do to us? We’re your family. We have every right to claim you.”
“But you don’t understand. They’re going to punish me, beat me.”
“Listen, little sister. I’ll come with our parents the day after tomorrow. Your bosses can’t hurt you if we all come.”
I’m still not convinced, but I say, “Fine.”
After they leave, I wash the lemonade glasses to hide evidence that they’ve been here. My mind feels like a thick, swampy cesspool, a muddled mess. I was always the strong one, and Matilde weak. Now Matilde is the one who wants to stand up and fight, while I’m ready to roll over, belly-up, like a frightened puppy. I don’t even know who I am anymore.
chapter 27
THE NEXT DAY, Niño Carlitos comes home looking haggard, with dark crescents beneath his eyes. He plunks down at the kitchen table and I bring him lemonade before he even asks. “Are you hungry?” I ask, biting my cuticle.
He shakes his head and sips the lemonade.
“How’s the Doctorita?”
“Fine. Bored. Knitting a lot.”
I stand in the kitchen doorway, watching him, trying to force the words out.
He glances up. “What is it?”
“I have to tell you something.”
“What?” His voice is wary.
“My family is coming tomorrow.”
He stops sipping. “H-h-how did they find out you’re here?” He’s stuttering. He must be scared.
“I called my sister.”
The vein in his forehead pops out. “Where did you call from?” he booms. “And with what money? Did you steal from us?”
You stole from me! I want to shout. You stole my childhood.
Instead, I say, “Blanca’s mother let me use her phone.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“Nothing. Just that I wanted to talk with my sister. And she came here and we talked.”
“So you were plotting together in secret? Remember what happened last time you tried this?”
“I’m used to bloody noses,” I say quietly. “One more won’t matter.”
He slams back his chair. There’s splashing and clattering as he dumps the lemonade in the sink, pours a cup of liquor, downs it, and pours a second cup. Then he storms over to Blanca’s house, banging on her door. “Don’t let Virginia use your phone!” His shouts sound through the walls. “I forbid it. And stay out of our business.”
That night, I barely sleep, my muscles tensed, watching my locked bedroom door. With dread, I wait for the knob to turn, the banging to start. But all is quiet, eerily quiet, except for the tick-tick-tick of my clock. The room feels small and suffocating, and I begin to worry that he might lock me in here. He could tell my family I went away. Or that I changed my mind. And keep me prisoner. But I’m too scared to open the door to check. He might be there, waiting. All I can do is watch the patch of black night through my window turn to blue and then yellow, ever so slowly, with the light of morning.
* * *
Niño Carlitos and I do not talk at breakfast. I sweep the floors, even though they don’t need sweeping, to give my hands something to do. Every few minutes, I peek anxiously out the window. Niño Carlitos has sent the boys to their room to play and now he sits on the red sofa holding his origami instruction book—his latest project—with little squares of colored paper spread on the table in front of him. His eyes stare at the print, unmoving, his fingers motionless on the pages. He looks old and worn, like the red velvet sofa that’s frayed and faded over the years. The first time I saw all that velvet, eight years earlier, I thought of berries and blood. Sweetness and fear. And now I see that my life with these people has been a confusing mixture of both.
The doorbell rings.
Niño Carlitos puts down the origami book, takes a long breath, and stands up. I make it to the door first, and open it.
Two strangers face me. They look small and old and dark. There is a man who must be my father. He barely reaches Niño Carlitos’s shoulder. The sour smells of wood smoke and wool and cows cling to him, saturating his poncho, his rough skin. He’s not the scary, big man I remember from my childhood. No, he stands crookedly, like a humble farmer, out of place in this city, out of place on the milk-white tile floor. His feet look like animal paws in sandals, heavily calloused with thick nail-claws and coated with dirt. His worn hat keeps his eyes shadowed.
And the woman who is my mother stands behind him, shorter than me, her shoulders hunched, a black shawl knotted at her neck over her blouse. Fake gold earrings and fat plastic beads loop around her neck, framing a face that might have once been pretty but is now deeply lined with exhaustion.
Beside them, Matilde and Santiago are smiling expectantly, Matilde with her apple cheeks and Santiago with a wide gap between his front teeth. Maybe I’m supposed to hug my mother, the way Matilde hugged me before. But Mamita never held me or comforted me as a child. Anyway, how can I touch this strange indígena? She’s no different from the ones begging for coins on the street with outstretched hands—the ones who make guilt creep over you like tiny, biting fleas.
“Come in,” Niño Carlitos says gruffly, and ushers them into the room.
My father removes his hat and holds it in his thick, farmer’s hands, the palms caked with grime, soil caught beneath the fingernails. Teary-eyed, my mother takes a step toward me and pats my back lightly, murmuring words in Quichua.
I cringe at her touch. I have no idea what she’s saying. She could be a guinea pig, chattering in incomprehensible squeaks.
Seeing my blank face, my father speaks in broken Spanish, choppy and slow. “Are you all right? Where have you been all these years? Why didn’t you come back? Why did you leave us?”
The words stick in my throat. Finally I whisper, “They said you didn’t want me anymore.”
“Tonta! Fool! How could you believe what they say? You know how the mishus are.”
I stare at my father, unable to speak. Then why did you let them take me?
Niño Carlitos clears his throat and says, “Sit down,” motioning to the sofa. My parents perch on the red velvet, their feet not quite reaching the ground, dangling like children’s feet. Matilde and Santiago sit in the armchairs and I drag in two dining room chairs for Niño Carlitos and me to sit on. There’s room for me on the sofa, but I don’t want my mother to try to touch me again.
“So, how is the corn harvest this year?” Niño Carlitos asks, as though they’re normal visitors.
“Fine,” my father says.
“N-n-not much rain, though.” Niño Carlitos shuffles the origami papers nervously. Red, yellow, blue, green, gold.
My father shakes his head.
“How was the p-p-potato crop?”
My father scoots forward on the sofa, so that his sandaled feet skim the floor. “Why did you take my daughter? Why? Why didn’t you ever bring her to visit?”
I flush at his directness.
Niño Carlitos is caught off guard. “W-w-well, she’s the one who didn’t want to go. A-a-and also, you know, we’ve been really busy.”
“Busy for eight years?” my father says. “She’s my daughter. You had no right to keep her here.” I strain to understand his thick accent. It’s like trying to understand a two-year-old. He can’t pronounce his r’s properly, and his vowels come out all wrong.
Niño Carlitos turns to me. “M’hijita, you haven’t wanted to leave, isn’t that right? You’ve been happy with us, learning all kinds of things. Isn’t that right, my daughter?”
I press my lips together, tasting the cherry gloss, and stay silent.
My father says, “We’ve come to take Virginia back.”
“But Migu
elito,” Niño Carlitos says, his voice suddenly hard, “what do you have to offer her? You live in filth. In a place like that, anything could happen to a young woman. Here with us, she’s safe.”
“We’re bringing her home.”
Then my sister speaks, eyes flashing with anger. “Virginia, tell this man! Isn’t it true that you want to come with us?”
I hesitate. I don’t know what I want. Suddenly, the thought of leaving forever terrifies me. Leaving and starting a new life with these strangers who are supposed to be my family. Maybe I could just go for a little while and see how I feel with them. And if I don’t like it, I can come back to live here, where life isn’t perfect, but at least I know what to expect. At least I know who I am.
I swallow hard. “Well, Niño Carlitos, it’s just that I want to go to my sister’s wedding. That’s all.” My voice sounds small and timid. “A few days. Just for the wedding.”
Matilde widens her eyes. “Virginia—”
“And when is the wedding?” Niño Carlitos interrupts.
“In a week.”
He turns to my sister. “So you’re only taking her for the wedding, then bringing her back?”
“Yes,” I say quickly. “Of course.”
Niño Carlitos weighs my words. “Fine,” he says, turning to my father. “I’ll send Virginia to Yana Urku in a week.”
My father stands up and my mother follows, hanging her head like a submissive indígena wife, and then Santiago and Matilde stride to the door, hand in hand, glaring at Niño Carlitos. Mamita pats me on the shoulder and says some things in Quichua. I give her a weak smile.
“We’ll be waiting for you there, Daughter,” my father says. “On Friday.”
“And on Monday, she returns here,” Niño Carlitos says harshly. “Right, my daughter?”
I nod, even though from what I remember, weddings in Yana Urku seemed to go on for days, maybe even weeks. But I’ll deal with that later. I’m too overwhelmed to argue. For now I want these people to leave so I can think about what I’m going to do.
“Goodbye, my daughter,” Papito says, and Mamita says something in Quichua.
Matilde holds my hand tightly. She narrows her eyes at Niño Carlitos. “You promise you’ll let her come?”
“I always keep my promises,” he says, smoothing the few strands of hair over his bald spot.
“Promise you won’t touch her?” she presses. “You won’t hurt her?”
He pats my shoulder. “I’ve never hurt you before, have I, my daughter?”
I step away.
Matilde hugs me, whispering in my ear, “You’re not really coming back here, are you?”
“I don’t know, Matilde. I don’t know.”
After they leave, Niño Carlitos slouches on the sofa, folding origami and then balling the paper up and throwing it against the wall. After three throws, he seems to come to a decision, and calmly picks up a bright green square. With precise movements, he folds a perfect origami frog. “For you, my daughter,” he says, offering it to me. Then he calls upstairs, “Come on, kids! Get in the truck. I have a surprise.”
The boys run downstairs and bounce into the truck. I follow warily.
He drives us to Yaguarcocha Lake, nestled between green mountains, a place where we’ve come only a few times before for special treats. The water in this lake is supposed to be sacred. If you throw an orange peel into the lake, it passes through long underground tunnels and mysteriously reappears kilometers away, at the Peguche waterfall, a place where wishes come true.
At a restaurant at the lake’s edge, we eat our fill of fried fish and share a giant bottle of Coca-Cola, which the Doctorita never lets us have for fear of cavities. Afterward, we buy a bag of tangerines for dessert, and as the boys play chase on the shore, Niño Carlitos walks with me. Sunlight glints off the water, off the tips of tall grasses and reeds.
“You like the origami frog, m’hija?” he asks.
“Yes.” I squint up at him, the sunlight so dazzling it’s hard to see.
“I can make you a penguin next.”
“All right.” I pop the last section of tangerine in my mouth. I like the juicy, sweet part, but have to force the white, stringy part down my throat. I toss the peel into the lake, watching the waves lick at it, carrying it farther from shore. How long it will take it to travel to the place where wishes come true? Weeks? Months? Years? Will it really ever get there?
I try to make a decision. It was easier to feel strong when Niño Carlitos was attacking me. Then I knew I had to leave. I had no choice. But now that he’s showing his sweet side, I feel weak. Staying with him might not be so bad after all.
Niño Carlitos holds out his hand, midair, on the path to touching my cheek, then he snatches it back and rubs it over his face. “Virginia, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
chapter 28
OVER THE NEXT WEEK, Niño Carlitos gushes compliments about my potato and chicken soup, brings me blackberry jam pastries, and takes me and the boys walking in the park. He makes me an origami penguin, crane, cow, and caterpillar. He does not try to come into my room all week. He does not try to touch me or hug me or cling to me like a magnet. The memories of the scary Niño Carlitos slide from my grasp like a wet bar of soap, and all I see is a thoughtful, generous man who is skilled at origami.
“Are you sure you want to go to this wedding?” he asks on Thursday night.
“Yes. But I’ll come back.” I can’t meet his eyes as I say this.
On Friday morning, I put on my best dress, long and flowered with narrow lace trim around the neckline and a fitted waist. I brush my hair and pull it into a ponytail with a little of the Doctorita’s gel.
At the bus station, Niño Carlitos stares at me a long time and says, “Goodbye, my daughter.”
I hug the boys tightly, one in each arm, and whisper, “You are my favorite little boys in the whole world. Remember that.” I don’t want to let go. What if this is the last time I see them? With a lump in my throat, I kiss their noses. “Take care of each other while I’m gone.”
When the bus pulls away, I let my tears fall. After an hour, the bus parks at the station in Otavalo. Once I step off the bus and look around, trying to orient myself, everything seems unfamiliar. I remember the day a decade ago when I came alone to go to the market for my boots. I feel exactly like that little lost girl again.
After hours of wandering, asking for directions and getting conflicting answers, I find the side street where the buses to Yana Urku pass. When I climb on the bus, people stare. I want to think it’s because I look beautiful in my dress. But the truth is, I’m one of the only girls on the bus not dressed in indígena clothes. I sit toward the back and look out the window, at the fields and white houses with red roofs and cows and pigs in the yards, the hills and scattered trees, and beyond them, lush mountains topped with jagged peaks. I push the window open and breathe in the soil and farm smells and woodsmoke. I reach up and let my hair loose from my ponytail, let it fall over my shoulders and run my fingers through it.
I am free. I can wear my hair how I want. I can dress how I want. I can go wherever I want. I can say whatever I want. I can do anything. The breeze blows in, lifting my hair up as though it has a life all its own, and I try to embrace my freedom. It’s not easy with this giant nervous ball gnawing at my stomach.
At the elementary school, I get off the bus. After just a few steps, my good shoes are coated in dust. I pass the low concrete building that brings back the feeling of the teacher’s sharp fingernails and the dreaded smell of chalk dust. It’s as if I fell asleep ages ago and had a long, strange dream and now I’m waking up. Nothing has changed—the school, the pink corner store, the crooked barbed-wire fences covered with drying clothes.
I drift along, and just before the turnoff to my parents’ house, I spot Papito at the edge of a field, by the road, fixing the fence. I pick up my pace, trying not to turn my ankles in the potholes. As I draw near, he looks up at me with a blank ex
pression, then returns his gaze to the fence.
About fifteen paces away from him, I stop and stare, willing him to greet me. He looks up again for a longer moment, then goes back to hammering the fence post.
He doesn’t remember me. He’s forgotten me all over again, after only a week.
“Papi,” I say in a hurt voice.
He stares blankly.
“Papi, it’s me, Virginia.”
He keeps staring. “That’s you, Virginia?”
“Yes,” I say, struggling to hold back my tears.
“Your hair’s different.” He sticks his hammer in his belt and says in Quichua, “Venipe,” motioning for me to come.
I walk toward him.
“How are you?” he asks.
“Fine.”
We look at each other for another awkward moment and then he says, “Mamá is in the house.”
“And Matilde?”
“In Quito. We’ll all go there tomorrow.”
I give a light nod. “All right.”
“The wedding will last a week,” he says, watching me.
“I know.”
“You’re not going back to the mishus, are you, Daughter?” His voice is low, rough with emotion.
I stare at the ground. “I don’t know.”
He pauses, then says, “After the wedding, we can go get your things. You can live with us.”
I don’t answer. In silence, we walk up the wide, weedy path, past the chickens pecking at trash at the side of the field, past the dogs that growl at me until my father waves a stick at them.
The yard and house haven’t changed except for the walls, which are now made of cement block instead of earth. The door is the same, a heavy wooden plank, and I push it open. Inside, my eyes take a moment to adjust to the dimness. There is the same dirt floor; a cooking fire to the left, with a pot of mint tea bubbling over it; pots and pans on rickety shelves; homemade wooden beds to the right, with old clothes piled up in falling-apart cardboard boxes; guinea pigs squeaking in the corner.