The Mortifications

by Derek Palacio

  Where did you get the coffee? he asked. It’s wonderful.

  You brought it, she said. From the hills.

  The old woman shook her head, and Ulises felt sorry for her. He could not imagine the terror of being near blind and finding yourself either in the presence of the past or never having left it but having grown old. Or maybe she thought that she’d grown old faster than everyone around her. More likely she realized she was entertaining a stranger and was terrified that he’d given her a bath.

  Do you know I’ve forgotten? Ulises said. I don’t even know which hills you’re talking about.

  The old woman shook her head again, and Ulises knew he was being cruel, but he had no idea where he was going after breakfast, and he couldn’t imagine his father hiking into the hills just for some wild coffee beans. Granma looked at Ulises and blinked twice.

  I meet you at the river, she said. Or, I did. Now my hip. It’s too far to walk.

  Of course, Ulises said. He thought she was speaking of the same river behind the packinghouse, the one that fed the nameless lake and came down from the mountains. I remember, he said, and this seemed to cheer the old woman up, because she smiled for a moment.

  Can I take some food with me? Ulises asked.

  Granma came over to him and touched his shoulder. A moment later she kissed him on the face, and Ulises knew this was what happened when Uxbal came—he stayed the night and left the next morning with a sack from Granma’s pantry.

  She walked with him only as far as the last flower bed behind the house, and the whole time she held her left wrist in her right hand as though it was broken. Ulises walked slowly beside her and saw how, in her near-blindness, she was hesitant outside. He marveled at how well she must have known her home. She moved among the rooms of the house without struggle, had a place for all the pots and utensils, and she was quick. Outside, where the ground softened in the rain or hardened in the sun, she was shy in her steps.

  Seeing her weak footing, he wanted to stay more than ever, to take her down to the river for lunch and back home again for an afternoon nap. She seemed a prisoner, though Ulises knew that was an exaggeration, but she had been so sweet, so kind to his foreign body and face, that he was indebted to her. Facing south, he saw the thin river leading up into the hills, toward the canopied forest. Ulises held Granma for a moment before he left, and she cried a little. She already missed him. Really, she missed Uxbal, but Ulises was more than happy to take Granma’s wanting for his father as his own.

  —

  Roberto followed Ignacio, who followed José, who followed Gerardo. Isabel, renewed by her decision, by the idea of abandoning all fathers, zealously consumed the remaining rebel men. The sex she offered them was functional, but under the circumstances it was also glorious. These were men who’d not touched the other women in the camp in years, who could not see through their own grunge the pleasantness of skin anymore, and it took a will like Isabel’s to ignore the stink of their armpits, the foul clothing they wore, and the situation of their rotting teeth. Her presence reminded them that they were, indeed, human. Her skin, her hair, her breasts, her legs, her lips—these were great and hidden things they had forgotten.

  She found each of them in a different place, and she didn’t bother as she had before in bringing them somewhere dark. They were all tucked away in the forest, and unless they fucked out in the open, in the clearing by the sabicu trees, privacy was not hard to assume. Isabel had the men behind trees, near anthills, amid a swarm of hummingbirds, and at the mountain creek. She had them, that is, wherever she found them, and they relented like prophets in the Bible, as though her naked body were a burning bush. They were struck with a mixture of panic and excitement, and they suffered a choking fear when she spoke to them like children, her sentences all commands. They heard her voice, and though they did not know her, they followed. She asked for nothing. She no longer bit her lip or swallowed her moans, and she could be heard screaming with pleasure.

  The months following her conquest were a strange time, when the camp seemed to resurrect itself. Revived, the men began to move about, to fix some of the shacks, to bathe more regularly, and to once again make the noise of human traffic. Their vigor was contagious, and the women, who hid even more secretly, even more quietly than the men, started to walk about freely in the daylight. Though they still spoke little and were rarely up after dark, suddenly Isabel did not feel like such a singularity. They looked at her as though she were a wild thing in their civilized world, but they were also not unkind to her. Some even left cleaner, newer clothes at the chapel for her, sometimes a bit of food.

  Uxbal, like everyone, noticed this and, perhaps inspired by the hubbub, managed to escape from his shack. He even went to see his daughter in her chapel, which now had the makings of a Bible inside it. Isabel had told Gerardo to steal paper as well as food the next time he went to the markets south of the range, and he’d brought back with him two red notebooks. On the lined pages inside Isabel had begun to record what testament verses she remembered, though she wrote them down not in the order of the King James, but in the order of her memory; Genesis was still first, but Kings followed that, and then came Mark, John, Proverbs, Micah, Nahum, Leviticus…

  Isabel was recalling Proverbs when Uxbal, walking stick in hand, blocked the light from the doorway. What have you done to this camp? he asked her.

  I don’t know what they’re doing, she said. You’re in charge of them.

  I know you fucked those men. I hope you didn’t do that in my name.

  I did it for myself, she said. Now that I’ve seen what you’ve become, I’m learning to want for myself.

  What have I become?

  I don’t know, entirely. I can only really say what you’re not. You’re not the man I was taken away from. You’re not the man who spoke about God as though he were in your blood. You’re not the father I took north with me. There are two Uxbals: the one I knew, and the one standing here.

  I’m not well, he said.

  You’re not dead.

  Did you come here to watch me die? Is that why you came back?

  I came back because I made a promise to you.

  I release you! Uxbal shouted. Be free!

  That is the last thing I want, she said. Go away.

  And Uxbal did.

  Eventually, Isabel saw her abdomen stretch. A floating weight took residence between her hips, and her breasts swelled. She thought it had taken this long because of how little food there was, how hard it was to acquire any mass when she sometimes ate only once a day. But her pregnancy began to show itself, and the loose canvas shirts she wore, the ones left behind in abandoned shacks, began to lift at her stomach. If she raised her arms over her head, the smallish bump above her crotch slid out from below like an almond-colored crescent moon. She was more tired than ever before. But, tracing with her fingers the upper strands of her pubic hair, she was satisfied. The skin there was taut, and if she pressed against it, the stretched muscles pushed back.

  The rebel men noticed first, and because they had begun talking again, it was not long before Uxbal found out. Since the camp’s resurrection, he’d gotten accustomed to staying in his shack until dark, at which point he would venture out into the night and join some of the others who had begun building bonfires in the evenings. Those men caroused for hours, unworried about helicopters or patrol units in the way that forgotten men have few concerns. As they talked, they fried plantains or roasted corn over the flames. They drank also, and in the mornings Isabel could smell the remnants of liquor in the air.

  One evening Uxbal came drunk to Isabel’s door. She’d built a lean-to against the chapel shack, and there she slept at night with Adelina and Augusto. She awoke to the noise of a man walking very slowly in her direction, and she feared it was one of the men, blotto and aroused. But it was her father, and he carried a candle stump and a pail of water.

  What are you doing? she asked. You’re going to wake the children.

  Kne
eling at the opening of the cramped lean-to, Uxbal crawled as slowly as possible toward the foot of his daughter’s bed. In the candlelight she saw that his pupils were as small as pinpricks. He had a sweat on his face that gave off a strange odor and washed the color from his cheeks.

  This is why he’s dying, Isabel thought to herself, and she wondered what, exactly, was the alcohol the men all drank. It was absurd that under such duress they would spend their energies getting drunk. But it was also understandable. She felt a surge of pity for Uxbal then, too cowardly to kill himself with a knife or a jump from a ledge. She also felt a fluttering affection, because maybe he’d been killing himself slowly as a way of leaving some door open, a death wish stalled by the hope that someone might return for him at the last possible moment.

  She noticed that despite Uxbal’s stupor, his beard was cleaner than it had ever been, and it was even trimmed. His clothes were not as dirty as usual, and, judging by the cleanliness of his fingernails, he’d recently bathed.

  Why are you here? she asked.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he motioned for her to stay on her cot, and then he gave her the candle to hold. Isabel sat up, and she watched as Uxbal pushed her blanket up her legs so that her feet were exposed. From the bucket came a washcloth, and in a moment Uxbal was cleaning her heels. The water was clear but smelled faintly of lemons, and her father’s hands, which were stronger than she imagined they still could be, felt good on her tired soles. He washed between the knuckles of her toes, and he scrubbed at her nails with a bamboo stick wrapped in stringy coconut hair. He rinsed her ankles and squeezed her tendons. When he was done, he dried her feet with the loose end of his shirt, which was cleaner than Isabel’s blanket. Finally, he spoke.

  The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance.

  Uxbal reached out his hand and lowered it onto Isabel’s stomach.

  God bless, he whispered. I’m sorry to be the grandfather but am overjoyed that you will be the mother. When it’s born, I hope you take it away from here. I hope you tell it nothing about me, and I hope that you are happy.

  Uxbal took back his hand and then lay down on the floor next to his daughter’s cot. He put his head in his arms and fell asleep.

  Isabel quietly cried; she mourned. Here was a descendant of Abraham, a man who was ancient by the time his first son came into being, which meant the man, the devout man, by rights, should have already given up on God. She considered the pain of waiting, the agony of expectation. Her father had been killing time, waiting for her to return, hoping she would come back. How could she, after so many years, think he had any faith left in him? Isabel also thought of her own child, the girl, and what she had accomplished, unknowingly, unwillingly, by simply being: Uxbal was weak and dying but now supplicant and apologetic. Isabel was free, though she never felt that she’d been imprisoned. Was it always the role of children to release their parents?

  Isabel fell asleep next to her father thinking these things, and she did not wake until the next morning when the sky was gray and a familiar voice called her name from outside the lean-to. She left her cot and her father and Adelina and Augusto, and she entered the cool morning. There she saw, walking through the trees her brother, Ulises. He stopped when he entered the clearing and saw her face. He said, Ma is dying, to which Isabel replied, So is Papi.

  —

  Isabel told Ulises everything she knew. She told him there once had been other rebels, but they had left before she’d arrived. There had been a movement to slowly expand the group, but it had failed, and instead they had retreated, first to their homes in Buey Arriba and then up into these hills. She told him how they now stole from farms abutting the mountain range and sold their earnings to the quiet black markets in Chivirico, Uvero, and Comecará. For clothing and other supplies, they raided homes on the edges of town, basically stealing from the other poor. They often went days without food, and they drank from the nearby mountain stream. They were scared of being caught, first as rebels and now as thieves, so they rarely left the camp.

  Their fear is irrational. It’s entirely paranoia, Isabel said. No one is coming here for them. If someone is watching, if anyone even knows about this place, then they know they only have to keep waiting and everyone will die.

  She told him the rebels barely survived, and most of the time they did not talk, though recently they talked more and more. There were men and women, and the men were like overactive sloths during the day, though at night they could chatter. The women were like shadows, and they watched the children for the most part, which was to say, they kept them quiet.

  I know that this doesn’t matter to you, Isabel said, but there’s no sense of God here anymore. These people don’t pray. Even Papi seems to have forgotten his voice, though sometimes it does come back. I’m building a chapel, which is a shitty hut, but in this place it feels like I’m re-creating the universe. I’m also teaching the two youngest children here sign language. They have no parents. In the camp, the children belong to everybody or nobody. But now they seem to belong to me. I didn’t ask them to follow me around, but I think maybe they’re too young to really fear the world as the other rebels do. Their names are Adelina and Augusto. They’re malnourished, but I’ve been feeding them more and more.

  If you worry that I’ve become a thief, know that I’m a vicarious one. I make the men share. They get me what I need when I ask, never immediately but always within a few days. They avoid me when possible, but if I call them by name, they listen. They don’t bother me otherwise. They’re terrified of me, and to some degree, so is Papi. He might think I’m a ghost, an angel come to get him. But no angel takes this long.

  Isabel also told Ulises that Uxbal was dying from alcoholism.

  I was dumb. I should have realized what it was when I first arrived. I could have taken him back to Buey Arriba, to the house. Our grandmother’s sister, Delfín, is somehow there. They were twins, you know.

  To all this Ulises said, Christ, you’re talking again. You look like Ma, but you sound like that old woman at the house. How is it you’re talking again? Tell me this means you’re giving up all your promises.

  I’m pregnant, Isabel said. I’m six months along, and my voice has changed.

  Ulises looked at his sister and saw the slightest bulge in her abdomen. He thought she’d been starved, that she was suffering a distended belly, but not that she was pregnant. She didn’t look as if she had the strength to carry a life beyond her own.

  You’re not exactly the brother I remember, Isabel said. You look like Papi, you’re so tan and bald. Though you’re much, much bigger. I forgot how large you’d gotten. You’re twice his size now. When you came out of the forest, you looked like him from years ago.

  Is the father a rebel? Ulises asked, pointing at Isabel’s stomach.

  His sister nodded.

  I want to meet him, he said.

  You can’t, she said. I don’t know who he is.

  What do you mean? he asked.

  I slept with six men. I don’t know who the father is, and I don’t want to.

  Ulises didn’t know what to make of that, but he heard in her tone a familiar distance. She had never felt the need to answer him, and she spoke in a way that made Ulises think she herself could not entirely explain what had happened. But she sounded and looked so different—her voice was much deeper, and she looked not frail but gaunt, though gaunt in a manner that revealed her bones as a rigid understructure, her frame as hard-edged rather than crumbling. She was taller and more severe, and Ulises realized that this woman was not really his sister but a young mother.

  You should go see Papi, Isabel said.

  Ulises said, You’re not afraid I’d hurt him?

  Not if you see him, Isabel said. Unless you’ve become the worst kind of coward.

  You should come home and see Ma. She’s had two rounds of chemotherapy, if you
can believe it. The outlook isn’t so good. And she blames all of this on herself. It might be nice of you to forgive her of that idea before it’s too late.

  Leave one dying parent for another? Isabel asked.

  I haven’t spoken to Papi in years, he said.

  And I haven’t spoken a word to Ma in a long time now.

  It was evening, and the sky was gray again, which made Ulises think it would rain.

  He said, There was a hurricane on its way when I left Havana. It’s not safe up here.

  There are small pits in each of the shacks, she said. They’re shallow but wide. We take cover in them during the worst storms.

  Doesn’t it flood? he asked.

  No. There are dry riverbeds on either side of the camp. Water flows around us. Most often the wind turns north of here.

  Isabel crossed herself.

  Why did you do that? Ulises asked. Haven’t you broken your vows? All of them?

  I’ve kept the promises I needed to.

  Do you really not know the guy? Ulises asked. The rebel father? Don’t you think the kid will look like him? But this was for Papi, wasn’t it? You’ve finally gone and done it. Of all the promises you’ve kept.

  The baby, Isabel said, is for no one but me. It was my choice, not Papi’s.

  The man sounds half-dead, but somehow he’s not dying so much as learning how to survive on air. You think he’s on his way out, but maybe this is his ruse, maybe this is the act he’s put on for those who stumble onto this camp. Here comes the military to eradicate any threats to the magnificent government, and what do they find? An old man, a dying man, a useless, empty man. Better to leave him be. Better to simply let him waste away rather than drag him down the mountain, in front of a fake judge and a fake jury and have him tried for treason. What then? Execute a feeble grandpa in public for all the people to see? Wait for the international rebuke, the humanitarians to come and protest? For other governments to call for another invasion of the island? He knows they’ll leave him be if they think he’s barely there. If he looked any better, then he’d be fucked. It’s an act, and you’ve fallen for it.