by Various
“Like always,” she says. “She just keeps plugging away. She’s even started cooking again. Made a huge dinner last night when I got in. Lechón, yuca, mojo, the works.”
Eddie grins. “Your grandmother’s yuca con mojo is legendary.”
They cross on either side of the shield in the middle of el patio. Their grandparents’ little piece of Cuba.
“So you’re back in Miami now?” she asks.
“Yup. Came back after college. Would’ve never left if it’d been up to me.”
Trailing a finger across one of the old dominó tables, she says, “I can’t believe Carmen, with her kid in school already.”
They pass the catpiss elevator and make their way up the stairs. Ana’s leg has been mercifully pain-free since she came down.
“What about you?” she asks. “You got a wife wondering why you’re out so late?”
Crap! What made her ask that?
“No. I was married, but it didn’t take.”
“Sorry,” she says.
“And you?”
She thinks about Chuck, who moved out last month. “It’s just me.”
They walk companionably up the to her grandmother’s door. “It was good to see you again,” Eddie says. “I wish it were under happier circumstances.”
Ana grips the railing, looking out over the courtyard. Why does every conversation with Eddie end too soon?
“I should’ve visited more,” she admits. “It’s funny, me being so desperate to leave, and you being so desperate to come back.”
She barely makes out his nod in the amber reflection of the streetlights. “I never got that,” he says. “Why were you so desperate to get out?”
“I wanted—” She trails off.
“I don’t know what I wanted,” she finally says. “I think I needed to feel free.”
“I get that.”
She turns to him. “Now I’m not sure why it mattered so much.”
They stand in silence, and finally he says, “Well I’m glad you came back to visit.” He leans over and kisses her cheek. “Let’s keep in touch this time.”
“Let’s,” Ana Teresa agrees, and somehow she knows she will.
As he makes his way back toward the stairs, she slips into her grandmother’s apartment. Abuela is nowhere to be seen, but the kitchen light is on, and a demitasse sits on the otherwise pristine counter.
The cafecito inside is still hot.
CABRÓN
by José Iriarte
First published in TWO: The 2nd Annual Horror Special (Nov. 2013), edited by Bruce Bethke
• • • •
IHAD A WHOLE pew to myself as the chapel began to fill for Sunday Mass. Other girls streamed in by twos and threes, picking out strategic locations on the aisles or in the back, but even as the last of these was snatched up I sat alone: the new girl, sullen and shy and more than a bit standoffish. This was where he first found me.
Maybe if I’d bothered to make any friends I’d have known what to expect from Hermano Leopoldo. Instead, I saw only an adult, mistook his Roman collar for a real priest’s, and trusted automatically. The only things that set him apart at all from the dozen or so priests on campus were his crooked posture and his oversized black shoes, one of which had a much thicker sole than the other.
He entered from the sacristy, walking briskly despite his twisted gait, and strode halfway down the side aisle. He glanced over the wooden benches, settled on me, and beckoned.
I waited for a cramp to pass and got to my feet slowly. My eyes locked onto his collar as I side-stepped into the aisle, and I fought down a surge of panic. Had I broken some rule? Was my skirt showing too much calf? Was my blouse untucked?
He said something too quietly for me to make out.
“¿Perdón?” I leaned closer and he did the same, squeezing my elbow. He smelled faintly of bleach, a scent which always nauseated me. The whole damned school smelled like bleach—particularly the dorm rooms.
“Ayúdame a preparar, Cristina.” His breath was humid on my ear.
I exhaled. He just wanted someone to help him prepare for Mass. There it was: the one constant in my life, whether I was back home in Cuba, in my adopted home of Nueva York, or in this soulless place in Puerto Rico. As far as adults were concerned I was a robot, or maybe a mule, to be ordered around and pressed into service. Or baggage, to be dropped off and put away whenever my presence was inconvenient.
I didn’t even think to wonder how he knew my name.
I followed him into the sacristy, where he handed me various objects in turn to place about the altar. He then gave me a box of matches and pointed to the large candle used in the entrance procession. I would have sworn it was lit before, but it was out now.
I pulled a matchstick out of the box. Would he guess about my smoking if I seemed too comfortable with its use? Biting my lip, I tried to remember what it felt like to be afraid of getting burnt. I grasped the wooden stick far from its phosphorous edge and dragged it along the rough side of the box.
I must have done too good a job of being awkward, or maybe he slipped, because the fat candle tumbled from its holder, spilling hot wax all over my fingers. I let out a gasp and tried to cradle them. That candle had been lit earlier.
The cleric grasped my hands, preventing me from rubbing them. “Déjalo endurarse, y después rómpelo. No te dañará.”
Now I remembered where I’d seen him before: he worked in the infirmary. Still, it was easy for him to say it wouldn’t do any damage. I couldn’t do much with him holding both my hands, though, and years of conditioning made me unable to disobey that collar. So I kept still, alone with this man in the sacristy, while the wax hardened on me.
After a moment, he broke off the hardened pieces, which fell right off without leaving a mark. He finished quickly and then paused, holding onto my hands. Seconds passed, and I began to wonder when he would let me return to my seat. Then I caught sight of his chest heaving. He stood there inhaling, sniffing me like he would some sort of flower. Maybe he smelled the wax, which filled the air around us with its redolence; I suspected something else, though. Or maybe something in addition to the wax. Because at that moment, all I smelled was myself. That coppery odor I’d learned to dread for the last couple years, and now here this man, this priest or something, drank it in, and just how had that candle gone out, anyway?
I yanked my hand away and murmured an apology.
“Gracias,” he said, dismissing me as if nothing odd had passed between us.
• • •
The single spot on campus where I felt comfortable was the garden behind the science building. I’d seen nothing like it back at my old school in New York, but this might have been a garden in Cuba, my real home. Like the one behind my abuela’s house in Pinar del Río. I used to go there every summer, but it looked like I wouldn’t visit again for a while.
Most of the girls ignored the garden, which made it the perfect refuge, and Dulce, the gardener, seemed to take pity on me, her lonely exile. I came here whenever I despaired of fitting in, and if she found me, she consoled me with a kind word or a piece of hard candy from a pocket in her apron. From anybody else I might have found the gesture condescending, and insisted huffily that I be treated like a sixteen-year-old, but it was impossible to take offense from Dulce. She had an enormous grin, a flash of white with flecks of gold lighting up her round, dark face, and I couldn’t help but laugh when she laughed.
Dulce and her husband Rafael, the head custodian, were the only adults living on the campus who were not nuns, priests, or brothers. They shared an apartment far from the dormitories, next to the cafeteria.
I visited my garden retreat several times that next week, pacing between the colorful and dangerous looking heliconias, the star-like bromeliads, and the fragrant ginger and jasmine plants, trying to put that weird encounter out of my mind.
I argued with myself as I walked, trying to convince myself I’d read more into the encounter than had actually hap
pened. He burned me by accident, and he’d been inhaling the scent of the wax. He didn’t mean to hurt me. He was a priest.
And yet.
And yet the instinctive part of my brain that didn’t reason or rationalize knew. I had interpreted the important bits of what happened between us fine, even if the particulars did not make sense yet.
The course of the next week vindicated that little voice, as I started hearing about El Jorobado. Whether they called him the twisted one because of his posture or because of something else was unclear, but almost every girl had a story about Hermano Leopoldo, who was not a priest after all. Stories of him lingering too long over a cut before bandaging it, or asking too many awkward questions of girls who stopped by the clinic, or resting his hands a bit too familiarly on a back or a shoulder.
Fine. I could handle his kind of creepiness more easily than the casual exclusion I suffered from everybody else at the school. I resolved to stay out of the clinic. I would deal with any colds or scrapes myself, and if anything worse happened—well, I had to make sure nothing worse happened.
As for the chapel, while I had no choice about whether or not to go, I didn’t have to sit alone. Next Sunday, I lingered in my room until I was in danger of being late, gazing at the magazine clippings I’d pinned up of Ricky Nelson, Bobby Rydell, and others.
Elena, my roommate, liked to laugh about my taste in gringo boys. Let her laugh. She had almost as few friends as I did, and she’d been at the school for ten years. The only thing she had going for her was pity, since her roommate before me died of some kind of allergic reaction months before my arrival. Even the pity was a bit watered down: several girls assured me that if your roommate died, you got straight A’s for the rest of the year.
The clinic was next to the library, far from the dorm rooms. When nobody needed his services, Hermano Leopoldo spent his days chatting with the head librarian, a balding, rotund priest the girls dubbed Padre Huevo. He sat by the circulation desk and scanned the room, staring at the girls as they pored over their homework or books they had pulled from the scant stacks. Fine. I didn’t need the library either. I could study and do my assignments in the room, if I didn’t mind being distracted by Elena and her only friend, Clara.
Elena and Clara spent their time composing poetry together, love sonnets to imaginary boys. They were so wrapped up in the idea of romance that the reality of being trapped in a girls’ school did little to dampen their enthusiasm. After a few days, they adjusted to my intrusion while I adjusted to their overwrought lines.
Clara waved to me as I came in one afternoon. I looked over, wondering what she wanted with me and wrinkling my nose at the scent of Clorox that never quite seemed to go away. She sat on Elena’s bed with her legs pulled up underneath her, bouncing as she twirled a pen with her fingers. Elena, who sat across from her, grabbed the legal pad lying between them on the bed, ripped off the top sheet, and held it out, close to tipping over as her large frame listed toward me. “Escribimos una poema para tí, Gringa.”
Frowning at the nickname—I was no more gringa than they were—I crossed the room, grabbed the yellow sheet from Elena’s outstretched hand, and examined the verse, braced for more ridicule. After a moment, though, I laughed despite myself. The two had composed an ode to Paul Anka, with ribald lines about his luscious lips, his brooding eyes, his thick brows, and his wavy black hair—lines so outrageous they had to be self-parody. “Gracias,” I said, grinning, and taped the sheet next to his picture on the wall by my bed.
Elena and Clara went back to their rhyming, while I pulled out my history book and started studying for a quiz the next day. I managed to tune them out, or maybe they were quieter than usual. Either way, I had lost track of my surroundings when a shout from Elena startled me. I looked up and saw Clara sprawled across the bed, and Elena struggling out of her awkward cross-legged position.
I jumped from my chair and managed to get to Clara first. I tried to pull her back into a seated position, as if sitting up would undo whatever made her collapse.
For a skinny girl she weighed a lot. Of course, she wasn’t helping either. Her eyes were open and unfocused, and she threatened to roll off the bed at any moment. Her head lolled from side to side until I finally thought to support it.
“Deberíamos llevarla a la enfermería,” said Elena.
“No.” Not the infirmary. Not to that creepy Hermano Leopoldo. Not with Clara all but unconscious. “Búscame un trapo mojado,” I said. I don’t know why I thought a cold compress would help, but giving Elena something to do kept her from arguing with me.
Clara started to come just as Elena returned from the bathroom down the hall. She blinked a couple of times and moaned softly.
“Clara,” I called to her. “¿Me oyes?”
She turned toward me, but only moaned again. Elena patted her lightly on the cheeks—our efforts to revive her struck me once again as clumsy and haphazard, but she slowly came back to alertness.
Clara tried to sit up, and I grabbed her hand to help her. As I held her, I noted absently the inky bruise on the inside of her elbow. The mark didn’t stand out against her dark skin until I stood right next to her. I wondered if she’d had any prior fainting spells, and if she hit her arm during one such episode, but I saw no other marks on her. Probably just a random bruise.
“¿Qué pasó?” Clara asked. Good question. What had happened, and why?
“Te desmayaste, Clara,” Elena answered. “¡Coño, qué susto!”
I nodded and squeezed Clara’s hand. What a fright indeed.
Elena helped her friend to her feet, and suggested a walk outside to clear her head. “¿Vienes?” she asked me.
I shook my head and watched the door close behind them.
What if she hadn’t awakened by herself? What if she had needed a doctor? Now the idea of avoiding the infirmary didn’t seem such a trifle.
Hands shaking, I dug through the clutter in the narrow closet by the foot of my bed until I found my purse, where I’d abandoned it six weeks ago. I snapped open the clasp and poked through the things inside: a Saint Christopher medallion, a pack of Chesterfields, a book of matches, a sanitary pad and belt, a billfold with more photographs than money inside, and, finally, some change. I started to dig out some coins, and then changed my mind, closed the purse, and picked up the whole thing. I might need those cigarettes later.
A pay telephone hung on the wall downstairs inside the student lounge. Several girls played cards nearby, but the phone was free. I wouldn’t have much privacy, but at least I wouldn’t have to wait. I dropped a coin in the slot and dialed our new number, glancing at the scrap of paper in my hand to be sure I got it right.
After five rings, I heard my mother’s voice. “¿Oigo?”
“Mami, it’s me,” I said.
“¿Qué tal, Cristina?”
I answered her in English, like I’d been doing since the first summer we spent in America, ten years ago. Eventually, she’d switch to English too, without realizing, like she always did. “Mami, you’ve got to take me out of here. I can’t stay.”
She sighed before replying. “¿Ahora porqué?”
“Because something isn’t right here.”
“¿Qué cosa?”
“There’s a brother who spilled hot wax on me and was smelling me, and that girl who died in my room, and another girl passed out in the same room tonight.” Christ. It sounded weak even to me. “Something bad’s going on here.”
“Mi vida, that girl died months ago. It’s terrible, but that sort of thing happens.
I twisted the cord around my hand and looked around to see if anyone was listening to me. Nobody was. “Please, Mami. I want to come home.”
“You said the same thing your first month at Brookshire Academy in Nueva York, but then you made friends and you weren’t so sad anymore. Have you made friends yet? Have you tried?”
“Sí, Mami,” I said, wondering if Elena and Clara counted. “I’m not homesick. Something is really w
rong here.”
“Brothers smelling you and spilling wax on you,” she said. Even over a phone line, I detected the skepticism in her voice.
“Why couldn’t I stay in New York?” I asked, switching tacks. “Why did I have to change schools just because you and Papi moved? Why do I need to be in Puerto Rico too?”
“You are homesick,” she replied. “Homesick for Brookshire.”
Dammit. I had fallen into a rut. I’d had this argument a dozen times already and lost each time. I couldn’t make her understand about Hermano Leopoldo, though, so what choice did I have but to try again? “So send me back, then,” I said. “There’s no reason I have to be here.”
A moment passed before she answered. “American schools are expensive, mi vida, and a university professor doesn’t make as much money as un senador.”
I gripped the phone as I faced the wall. “Then let me come live with you,” I whispered.
“Cristina, you will go to the best school we can send you to, and right now that’s Nuestra Señora de Fátima.”
“Mami, please,” I said, trying to hold back a sob. “I’m scared here.”
“I’m sorry, mi vida,” she said. When I didn’t say anything, she added, “Look, it won’t be forever. You know how it always goes. Once the US decides they don’t like Fidel, they’ll send in the Marines, and things will go back to the way they were. Maybe your father will even run for presidente. El año nuevo en Cuba.”
“El año nuevo en Cuba,” I repeated numbly. Where we hoped to celebrate New Year’s was the last thing on my mind.
She chatted at me for another minute or so, I don’t remember what about, and we hung up.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
• • •
As the days passed, I began to sense my certainty that something was profoundly wrong at Fátima slip away. I had taken a series of minor calamities and pieced them together into some sort of ludicrous dark tapestry, with Hermano Leopoldo at the center. Hermano Leopoldo, who was almost certainly harmless, and who only aroused suspicion because of my aversion to his disfigurement.