The Mortifications

by Derek Palacio

  One day the boy came to the chapel with the girl, and he knew how to cross himself, kneel, and hold his hands in prayer. The girl had taught him, or maybe he’d asked what went on inside the shack with the singing woman. When Isabel sang, he listened just as intently, and sometimes he would rock in place. His hazel eyes were more expressive than the girl’s, and whereas she fell into a trance at each song, he seemed to experience brief states of ecstasy.

  Isabel didn’t know what to call them. When it had been just she and the girl, she could speak, and it was obvious to whom she spoke. The boy confused things. Eventually, Isabel went to Uxbal. She still didn’t want to see him, but she had, very quickly, grown attached to the children. Their presence was restorative, and Isabel, wanting to feel again like her old holy self, found interactions with the boy and girl reminiscent of her work with the deaf in Hartford. In their presence she was suddenly an authority again, a force for change in their lives. Uxbal was, of course, still festering in his shack, and though he had managed to finish washing himself, his feet, knees, and hands were dirty again, which led Isabel to think her father had since fallen out of bed once or twice. It pained her, but she didn’t ask him about his health and instead demanded the children’s identities.

  What are their names?

  The girl, he said, is Adelina. The boy, Augusto.

  Who are their parents?

  I don’t know, Uxbal said. They might not be here anymore.

  Who feeds them? Isabel asked. Who takes care of them?

  It seems you do.

  She went to Efraín, who thought she’d come to sleep with him again, and he had his shirt off before Isabel could get a word out.

  No, she said, and her voice, as with Guillermo, frightened him. He sat on a cot in the shack he shared with three of the other men and shrank into himself.

  Whom do Adelina and Augusto belong to? Isabel asked.

  Efraín shook his head and shrugged.

  You can talk, Isabel said, so talk.

  But he didn’t. Terrified of her, he curled into a ball on his cot and covered his ears. She tried Guillermo as well, but he just whispered, I don’t know, and he walked away.

  Adelina and Augusto loved the sound of their names, and Isabel worked them into songs. She was aware that doing so turned them into sheep and that they would follow her blindly when she called them. But she abused her power only to teach them things, namely the sign language she still knew. Because they could read bodies, they could very quickly read hands, and as soon as they grasped the language, the basic motions and elementary symbols, they could talk to each other even from distance, something they did constantly. Isabel understood that they were like infants, though they were probably four and five. Having learned a new way to disturb the world, they could not stop.

  There was another consequence to this education: they began to ask questions, and sometimes Isabel could not sign and speak to them fast enough.

  Adelina asked, Can we have more food? Where did you come from? Why does your Spanish sound that way? How come you don’t talk to the old man anymore? What is prayer? Why do we wave our hands around when we enter the chapel? What does that sign mean? Why are hummingbirds so small?

  Augusto asked, Why did you come here? Do you have children? How did you learn to speak? Do the other adults know how to sign? Why won’t they sign with us? How do you know the old man? Is he dying? Did you come here to build this chapel? What happens when you pray? What is God? Can I have a new shirt? Will you teach me to sing?

  The both of them asked, Are you our mother?

  Isabel told them, I’m sorry. I’m not. I don’t know who is.

  It was the first answer she could not give them, and she saw on their faces that speaking, through one’s hands or mouths, did not really mean one knew anything more, that it wasn’t really knowledge. It was the first time she’d disappointed them. She sang them to sleep that night—they shared a shack with two bedrolls instead of cots—but as they listened, they stared at the roof, and they shared the same blank expression, meaning they were, without a doubt, siblings, something Isabel offered them in exchange for parents.

  He is your brother, I think, and she is your sister, Isabel said. You look too much alike not to be related. But it was nothing they hadn’t already sensed, and Isabel had to leave them that night with the same hunger she’d suffered all her life: a desire to understand where they were from and why.

  Alone, Isabel went to the chapel. She did not feel tired, only guilty for what she’d done to the children, which was give them a voice through which they could discover that they were hungry and lacking. She felt slightly ill and imagined it was morning sickness. She thought about the new cells possibly multiplying inside her, breaking apart in order to propagate, dividing and making space for bones and veins, layering like mud. Her sense of gestation, she knew, was more biblical than biological, but still she reveled in the idea of the Lord working his hands into her womb, perhaps in the same fashion he had with Sarah or Mary, and molding from her own flesh a new human. Yet, where before she had been righteous of God, she now, with the smell of the rebel children lingering in her nose, felt dangerously culpable for the hypothetical baby. Her decision had not been exactly rash, but the cost of her new calling had become a human life.

  She wondered if Sarah knew what the Lord wanted of Isaac so many years down the road. Isaac, Isabel remembered, meant laughing one, but Abraham, not Sarah, named his son. Perhaps he thought it was a joke as well: Abraham a hundred years old and having a newborn boy. What could an old man teach a boy that young? Descendants as many as the stars, but on whose back would that universe be built? Until the final moment, until the angel intervenes, on Isaac’s back or, at least, on his chest. His blood flowing from the wound God told Abraham to inflict. The children like lambs. Hypocrisy and lunacy all at once. Isabel thought, I am a part of this.

  Isabel pushed her palm into her stomach to see if she might feel something, though she knew she wouldn’t. Like Adelina and Augusto talking through their hands, begging for answers—Who are our parents?—and not finding any. Feeling nothing, it struck Isabel that her child, the girl, when she was older might want to know who her father was. She might want to seek him out one day. She would have the same questions as the mute rebel offspring, and Isabel couldn’t stop her from asking. The righteous anger came back then, because Isabel saw Uxbal in bed, heard him telling her what to do, even after she’d come back to him and he’d abandoned his faith. Isaac like a lamb, Isabel as dumb as a sheep, Abraham as obedient as a blind cow. What could she tell her little girl that would put an end to the searching? What could she say to a young woman that would keep her from looking? A man could be found. She, of course, knew this.

  Six men, however, might not be found. Six men, like seeds cast into the wind, might spread so far apart that it would be nearly impossible to track them down. Especially six men who did not want to be found. Who were accustomed to their isolation, who would not see their face in a child even if God whispered the truth into their ears. Six rebels, Isabel thought, are better than two. I would not know. I could not know. When she asks, I could just say, I’m sorry. I don’t know. It’s impossible to know. You don’t really have a father. Not in the way most people do. But you have a mother, and she loves you to death.

  It was nearly dusk when the truck pulled into Las Tunas. Ulises and Simón, as payment for the ride, helped the soldiers transfer cargo, loading a hundred boxes of gauze bandages onto the trailer. Ulises asked where the soldiers would sit on the ride back to Santa Clara, and the young one said they would stand at the rear. They would make a game of it and try to shove each other out the back.

  The young soldier invited Ulises and Simón to a bar where the food was cheap and there was a jukebox. It was dark and windy out, and the soldiers said it would rain overnight as the hurricane slammed Havana. One of the men said a prayer at this and crossed himself. He had been the one playing the guitar on the truck, and Ulises realized
that the songs he’d heard on the ride were religious tunes, string variations of Catholic hymns.

  Inside the bar, the musician said grace over his food, and when the young soldier, the jealous brother, noticed Ulises studying the guitarist, he said, Paulo wanted to be a priest, but he was too dumb. He couldn’t keep track of all the saints’ names or the dates of their deaths. Doesn’t have a mind for books.

  St. Cecilia’s got him, Simón said.

  She did, because Paulo, after only a few bites, had gone over to the jukebox to study the record list. Ulises thought the man must have had a song already going in his head, because he tapped out a beat on the floor, but the song he paid for was a leisurely ballad between two lovers living on the opposite sides of a bay who sang to each other across the water.

  Paulo thinks all ballads are really about God, the young soldier said. He says to read Song of Songs.

  The food was passable, and Ulises ate in silence. Simón spoke to the bartender about a ride farther east, but the barkeep couldn’t help, though he did have an aloe plant growing behind the building, and he offered a branch to Ulises for his sunburn. The soldiers drank slowly but steadily, such that hours passed but no one really got drunk. Some girls came in later in the evening and danced alone between a pair of tables. A few of the soldiers approached them. The girls looked very young, but their makeup was pretty, and one of them had a blond dye-job that wasn’t terrible.

  At one point the girls stopped dancing and started singing. They surrounded the jukebox and crooned about a campesina who grew peppers in her yard and whose husband died one day in a burning field of sugarcane. The widow cut stalks from the burnt crop and pressed her own juice, stewing it with her peppers. She gave the peppers to men she knew were not faithful, and they returned home to their wives. The blond girl sang the loudest. Like her hair, her voice was not terrible. The other patrons in the bar had quieted, and Ulises saw that even Paolo seemed impressed, so much so that at the next song he asked her to dance.

  The other reason why Paolo could never be a priest, the young soldier said: a girl with a decent voice makes his dick hard. You imagine that in church? The priest’s robes with a little pop at the crotch?

  She looks too young, Simón said.

  Country whores, the young soldier said.

  Paolo was pulling the blonde closer to him, but the song was too fast, and she kept dancing away.

  Kids playing dress up, Simón said. She’s going to slap him if he doesn’t give up.

  Paolo left the girl after the song ended, but a couple of numbers later he went and touched her on the shoulder, which made her jump. She looked scared, and Paolo smiled as best he could, but then she said something, and he grabbed her by the arm. The blonde’s friends started yelling. The bartender told the young soldier to do something. The young soldier shook his head but didn’t move.

  What if that was your sister? Ulises asked.

  Fuck you, the young soldier said, but he got up from his stool.

  He went over to Paolo and took him by the arm, which prompted Paolo to swing for the young soldier’s face, which led to more blows. Together they knocked over some chairs, but in the end they fell to the ground, the young soldier—the bigger of the two—atop Paolo, and they seemed drunk at last. Finally standing, Paolo wrapped his arm around his friend and mumbled apologies. The girls were long gone.

  Dragging Paolo out the door, the young soldier called out to the bartender, Smokes, water, whiskey!

  The bartender put the drinks and half a pack of cigarettes in front of Ulises and said, They can smoke in here if they like.

  Outside, the young soldier took the shots from Ulises and gave both the waters to Paolo.

  That wasn’t my sister, he said.

  Have a smoke, Ulises said. He pulled a stick from the pack and tapped it against the box, lit it, and passed it along.

  He did the same for Paolo, who instead of thanking him said, We were talking while we danced. She kept asking me where we were going, what we were doing, which cities I’d been to. She asked if I could take her in the truck with us, and I said, of course not. One girl and twelve men? I asked her what she thought that would be like, and she said fantastic. I told her that we couldn’t take her, but she wasn’t having it.

  I’m sorry about your face, the young soldier said. Your nose looks like shit.

  Paolo waved his hand in front of his face to clear the smoke, which hung like a mist because the night was so humid.

  He said, They think you’re out having fun all the time. They don’t know how sore your ass gets on that bench in the back of the truck. It’s a miracle we can walk after driving around all day. You just want to stay somewhere for a little bit, not keep running around, and they want to start a fucking voyage across the island.

  Ulises recognized boredom in Paolo’s face, the appearance of having done the same thing over and over again until it was reflex.

  You get in a lot of fights? Ulises asked.

  Some, he said, but this guy always takes me down. He’s not the first subofficer, but he leads. He kept Salvo out of jail once for hitting a girl.

  Same story, different asshole, the young soldier said.

  Do you get tired of it?

  It’s my lot.

  The infantrymen slept in the truck, but Simón got a room for Ulises and himself just above the bar. It was the bartender’s apartment, but because he worked all night, the space was free until the morning. There was a bed and a cot, and Ulises pleaded with Simón to take the bed. He eventually did, and Ulises climbed into the cot, his limbs hanging over the edges, and turned out the light.

  Soldiers are a boring bunch, said Simón.

  They were drunk, Ulises said.

  They’re bored, so they pick fights.

  The young one seemed sincere. We’re probably around the same age.

  He was the worst, Simón said. Some romantic ass. Poets and warriors, equally annoying. They go looking for trouble, and then they whine about it.

  Ulises said, That’s not new: Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate…

  What’s that? Simón asked.

  The first line of The Aeneid.

  Isn’t that about a soldier who abandons his city?

  Yes. But then he starts Rome.

  And then Rome burns, Simón said. I’m old-fashioned, but people belong in the fields. The plants are supposed to die, so they can come back. Bananas are perennials. They die ever year, and you get used to it. You don’t worry about things going away.

  That soldier was worried about his sister going away, Ulises said.

  A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever, Simón quoted.

  I didn’t think you went to church, Ulises said.

  Only when I visit my mother, though sometimes the Bible comes back like this. When I’m with her, I can’t forget it. In Mexico, I could recite the whole book.

  Isabel reminds me of Cuba, Ulises said. When I see her, I see our father. I remember our old house. When she’s gone, it’s harder to picture the place. I could draw pictures of my father’s tomato vines if Isabel were at my side.

  You won’t need her in a day or two, Simón said. You’re going to see it all again.

  —

  In the morning Simón left Ulises halfway through breakfast to see about a bus. There were rumors that the hurricane had turned north toward Florida, so the island was coming out of its hole. No one knew for certain, however, because the TV and radio signals were still a jumble of white noise. When Simón returned to the bar, he came with a horse. The buses were coming, supposedly, but not a soul knew when, and the distance to Bayamo was only ninety kilometers. They would be there in a day and half, and Buey Arriba was only forty kilometers from there.

  Where did the horse come from? Ulises asked.

  There’s a lot in town for loose animals. Because of the hurricane.

  The storm hasn’t landed here, Ulises said.

  The animals run ahead o
f the weather, from west to east. And no one’s going to chase a horse across the island.

  The horse had no saddle, but Simón said they would go to town and purchase some blankets, and they only had to suffer for a day and a half anyway. In town they also bought Ulises a baseball cap, a new pair of sunglasses, and a bottle of sunblock. Simón told Ulises to tie his glasses around his neck with a string, both because the horseback ride would be bumpy and because sunglasses were easy to pickpocket.

  On the road to Bayamo Ulises saw many things. He saw herds of Siboney cows crossing weedy fields between irrigation ditches. He saw abandoned silver mines, the pits often not twenty meters from the road with shallow, green-tinted rainwater collected into ponds at the bottom. He saw what Simón told him were palenques, or crumbling, walled-off villages built by escaped slaves three hundred years ago. At crossroads he saw roadblocks stacked along the highway’s shoulders, and Simón said they were used to guard the coffee harvest as it was transported east. To keep the caravans from being pillaged, raided for the black market, the military cordoned off the highway and made a road with walls on either side. Ulises saw children carrying sacks of what he thought were stolen beans. On the second day he saw a great lizard cuckoo flitting about at dusk, chasing moths, and when, finally, they were within sight of Bayamo, they were also in sight of the Sierra Maestra, and Ulises saw the hills he’d known as a boy.

  There, he and Simón rented a room at the only hotel for miles around—really a hostel, really the second floor of a bakery with a few storage rooms given windows. From their window Ulises saw, in the moonlight, smoke rising from the east, though he saw no fire. Later, from his bed, he saw a painting of Che Guevara on the western half of the ceiling. He closed his eyes, and in that darkness he saw his mother, and he missed her. He saw his sister, and he was angry. He saw his father and did not know what to feel.