“But they had a big fight and she threw him out, says Oscar.”
“If she sees him coming back with us sober, she’ll forget about it, you know how she is.”
It’s began to drizzle and I’m glad I took an old towel to wrap up Bello with. We get to Gustavo’s bank and look for him but he’s not in the front with the other tellers and the woman on the other window says he’s out sick today. I leave shattered, he was my only hope and going to his house is not an option because it’s far away, we don’t have money for the bus, and I don’t even remember the exact address. We head towards Aunt Elli’s house, she lives in a good neighborhood where they have lots of bakeries and shops, and I hope someone there will take pity on him and adopt him.
“You’re going to try Aunt Eli?” asks my brother, horrified. “She hates cats.”
“No, but if I leave him near some of these shops in her area, somebody may want him, he’s so beautiful.”
We walk down, I pick a comfortable spot for him by a tree and I lay him down. He begins to purr and I stroke him till it begins to get dark.
“We have to go,” says my brother nervously. “She’ll get mad if we take too long.”
Blinded by my tears I turn to go and he looks at me steadily with his huge green eyes but doesn’t try to follow me. He knows what’s happening and he understands so he stays there in his towel, curled up in a little bundle of whiteness. He is the noblest animal in the world so I know he forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself. I turn to look at him one last time and his eyes are fixated on me as if wanting to memorize my face. Like a zombie I walk back home passing carefree people going on with their lives in this balmy evening of January.
I’m grateful for the unusually warm weather despite the drizzle, with soft, gentle breezes so rare for La Paz, and hope and pray he’ll get another home quickly before the floods hit us. The thought gives me temporary comfort because there are many upscale bakeries and houses in the area, but the feeling doesn’t last, and a black, oppressing cloud descends upon me and my tears keep falling down incessantly.
“Don’t cry anymore,” says Oscar two blocks away from the house. “He was just a cat.”
That is the wrong thing to say, I find myself beating him with my fists and I can’t stop, I want to but I can’t. A man interferes by pulling me away from him roughly.
“You’re bigger than he is, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
I lower my eyes shaking and can’t answer him, my voice won’t come. I can’t understand what’s come over me, what’s made me react this way.
“Whatever is going on,” says the middle aged man with concern. “Don’t take it out on him, violence never solves anything, get to the root of the problem.”
Oscar is crying and his nose is bleeding. “Tell her what I did to you, Oscar,” I say gently, pulling his head back and wiping his nose with my sleeve. “Let her kill me and get it over with. You’ll be doing me a favor.”
The bleeding stops and he says nothing but continues crying and mother assumes he’s crying over the cat, but something dies in me. I stop eating and sleeping. I want to throw up all the time and can’t stop crying. In my mind’s eye I see Bello lost, helpless and abandoned in a cruel, uncaring world. Understanding the depth of my grief, mother relents and urges me to look for him and bring him home, but it’s no use, we look for hours, combing the neighborhood from top to bottom, asking anyone who will listen to his description but he has vanished, nobody has seen him and he has become just another faceless, inconsequential stray among thousands, eating out of garbage cans, sleeping in dumps, being tormented by mean kids who throw rocks at him.
My sadness turns to rage, an emotion so strong, so powerful, it terrifies me. I have controlled it all my life, submerged it through the storms of my life, priding myself in my self control but now it’s coming to the surface and boiling over. I want to go home and plunge a knife into mother but these homicidal thoughts bring me no comfort, quite the contrary, they fill me with dread and anxiety.
I know by instinct that I can’t go home. I have to get away from her; I can’t cope with another scene at home when I tell her what I really think of her. She’ll start screaming that I am an indolent ingrate who has always loved the cat more and I won’t be able to take it, not this time, so in a calm, controlled voice I tell my brother to go back home and leave me alone. He sees the ominous expression on my face and obeys me quickly, begging me to be careful, urging me not to do anything crazy, swearing the cat will turn up and everything will be alright because he has a good feeling about it.
I get away from him and walk for hours, something is driving me through the streets like a demon, I’m wearing my usual jeans and red sweater and it is cold outside but my anger makes me hot and I’m on fire, oblivious to the weather or the people on the streets. I want to keep walking till I find myself in another country and another world. Somehow I find myself in El Alto, the capital of Indian Bolivia, and one of the most violent areas of La Paz.
I walk in the windy, dusty streets, passing dwellings of adobe, brick and cinder where the majority of the natives coexist without access to potable water, electricity or heat to ward off the frigid winds lashing from the mountains. The winters here are the coldest and the sun burns the brightest due to its proximity to the equator.
El Alto is the flash point for rapes, robberies, strikes and protests due to the subhuman living conditions most residents are forced to endure, and this is the last place I should be caught in but I don’t care, I don’t care about anything. I just want to go away and never come back, never have to look at mother again. Most people here live without showers or toilets, urinating and defecating into the open air, in the public dumps where most of the assaults take place.
We know from Aunt Sonia’s maids that life in this vicinity is extremely hard, people get by selling contraband and stealing; and crime and infant mortality are rampant. The maids told us many times that when they were growing up they had nothing to eat or drink, and that even the good old “chuṅo” [“ freeze-dried potato”] that is the most abundant and cheapest of foods to be found in Bolivia, is scarce and expensive in El Alto.
Watching some menacing figures advancing towards me, I’m suddenly aware where I am, and I’m seized with panic. I turn around and start running down the hill, the frigid air seems to go right through my clothes, but I’m oblivious to it, I just want to get out of this zone quickly.
My rage is now replaced by stark terror like that of an animal of prey. Luckily I’m fast; at school I sometimes compete at the national stadium with my class, and always win because I have long legs and can really run. The men chase me for a few more blocks yelling “Gringa Loca, Gringa Loca” but finally give up, and I know that they are right, only a crazy girl would have risked her life coming here by herself.
I get home at dusk, realizing for the first time that I haven’t eaten or drank anything since my oatmeal this morning. My red sweater and black jeans are drenched with perspiration and I feel nauseous and dizzy, nearly collapsing at the doorway.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” says mother covering me with a blanket to stop my shivering. “We went to your aunt’s house to look for you and she said she hadn’t seen you at all, so I was going to go to the police to report you missing again, but I know that with the bureaucracy in this country they wouldn’t even begin to look for you till you were missing for at least twenty four hours, so I just sat here and prayed.”
There was such hurt and despair in her eyes that I felt guilty. “So now you know how to run away too, so now you know how to really hurt your mother too,” she said wiping her tears.
I knew why she said that, she had ran into her friend Luisa at the market days ago, who told her one of her nieces had ran away again and nobody knew where she was. I let her take off my clothes and give me a sponge bath with warm water. She keeps crying and apologizing for the cat saying I could have another cat if Bello doesn’t come back, but I know I c
ould never do that because my cat was irreplaceable and I would never be able to replicate his soul. She makes me swear never to run away again and I nod realizing that I have succeeded in punishing her and getting rid of my anger. The following days are a blur as I develop bronchitis and she nurses me back to health, alarmed at my condition because I have always been very healthy, catching colds only rarely, in contrast with Oscar whose frequent colds and sudden fevers drive her to distraction.
I find myself enjoying my frailty; it feels good to be taken care of, to drift away, and to let things happen to me for a change. She makes me chicken soup and orders me to drink it scalding hot so that it will have the necessary effect of making me sweat. She makes me inhale the vapor of eucalyptus leaves that she boils in a pot to clear up the congestion in my chest. I make a full recovery and the pain over the loss of my pet abates a little, but every time I see a white cat with black little paws on the streets my heart jumps. I hate not knowing what’s happened to him, feeling that if I did I could finally let him go and get some closure, but I keep these feelings to myself, not wanting to aggravate things at home now that we are all getting along so well.
~~~
Mother is very excited at the prospect of an upcoming job at the bakery, filling in for a friend of hers who will be going on maternity leave in a couple of weeks. The prospect of an extra paycheck for six straight months pleases her enormously, and she keeps knocking on wood so that nothing goes wrong at the last minute.
“You never know,” she says with glee as the date gets closer. “Alicia Moreno might not come back and it could become a permanent job for us.”
I feel gratified to see her so relaxed and happy. She begins taking better care of her appearance and has even allowed me to cut her shoulder length hair into a page boy with bangs that makes her look younger. Angel has finally outgrown the need to be in our arms all the time too, and is happily crawling all over the place. She has interviewed with the baker who has a lot of influence with the boss, and he has agreed to let us all work there, replacing Alicia. Mother laughs and says he’s now getting three and a half assistants for the price of one. I sense we are about to enter a happy period in our lives and pray that nothing disrupts it again.
~~~
One night, a week before Alicia’s due date, the miracle I’d hoped for so long finally happens. I dream that Bello has come back and wake up to the sounds of faint meowing outside the door. I rub my eyes in disbelief thinking that I’m still dreaming but it sounds like my cat because I would have recognized that meow anywhere. I tiptoe out of bed anxious not to wake up everybody, and gently open the door. The sight of my cat sitting outside the door crying is something I will never forget as long as I live. He’s lost a lot of weight and looks quite dirty and matted but otherwise seems fine, despite his ordeal. Wild joy seizes me and I pick him up in my arms and let out a cry of happiness.
“It’s Bello,” I yell. “He’s back, he’s back.”
Everybody rejoices, it’s truly a miracle. How did he do it? I’ve taken him miles away, he had to have crossed busy streets full of traffic and pedestrians where he could have easily been killed – he had survived hunger, thirst, loneliness and dangerously heavy floods that had recently caused mountain slides. I take him to my bed cradling him like a baby and fiercely exclaim that I will never part from him again, that mother will have to throw me out too, but she is very contrite and pets him with eyes glistening with tears, reassuring me she is not the monster I think she is, and that she’s missed him too. I’m too emotional to answer her, and she pets Bello while he purrs loudly.
“It was a terrible thing to do to you, Vicky,” she says drying her eyes. “And perhaps you will never forgive me but I’m going to make it up to you. Let’s start by giving him a bath early in the morning and by putting some meat into those bones of his. In no time at all he will look as good as new, you’ll see.”
Within a week, he regains some of his strength and confidence but he has lost his good looks for good. His face is haggard and scrawny and his luminous eyes look haunted. He has suffered - this heroic cat of mine who managed such a feat. I often wonder how he survived. He was gone for two weeks, two weeks eating trash in the streets, two weeks cold, hungry and afraid. Two weeks at the mercy of the elements, taking shelter from the rain, hiding from stray dogs and mean humans who threatened his life, unable to understand why he lost his home, what he did to deserve to be thrown out into the streets. Two weeks searching for the only home he has ever known. I am convinced he has come back solely for me, and get mad at the ignorance of people who say cats don’t belong to anybody.
It infuriates me to no end that people see animals as disposable objects, like toys they can acquire and discard without much contemplation. Yet from the beginning of our relationship, Bello has given me his heart, waiting outside the door for my arrival, cuddling by my pillow at night, loving it when I kissed him under his chin and rolled him onto his back to tickle his body. He is a loner like me who is very selective with his affections and whose loyalty has to be earned.
~~~
The job at the bakery comes through at last and we are told to show up on Monday. Alicia kept postponing and postponing the date because she was still feeling well, but in her eighth month she began to get backaches and dizziness and was finally forced to give up her job. To make sure everything was alright, mother has another interview with the baker, and she reiterates that she has to bring all her children along because she can’t bear the thought of leaving them alone in the house. The baker reassures her that it’s no problem, and we all start to work on Monday. Juán Gomez is a middle aged man with small eyes, fat cheeks, a small mouth and an egg shaped head. He is tall and gray haired with enormous hands, a big belly and baggy pants, and soon Angel takes to calling him “Santa.”
The bakery shop is a bright and airy place, and the pastries are displayed in neat rows, separated by glass partitions that allow the customers to choose without touching the merchandise. The floor is tiled and we have fun mopping it a couple of times a day, with my brother doing his favorite flamenco dance when nobody is looking.
Oscar is also very good at the cash register and I have the job of writing down every purchase in a black book so the owner can collect the money at the end of the day. The diminutive, quiet owner with thick glasses and balding hair seems to trust Juán Gomez implicitly and never questions his decision to let all of us stay at his shop. To prove to mother that he is in agreement with all of us working there, Juán Gomez came out to meet him a few times with Angel in tow, and the owner didn’t say anything. Juán has a loud, strident voice and an even louder laughter that seems to come from some hidden place, deep within his soul, shaking his entire body. He tells us raunchy jokes and celebrates his own stories raucously. He brags about his job continuously saying that his employer is afraid of him rather than the other way around, and the reason is because he is the best baker in town and he knows it.
Mother enjoys his jokes and attention for he is always giving us bread and pastries to take home, but when she realizes he has taken a fancy to her, she begins to worry. She thinks he is a good man at heart but he looks like one of the caricatures in our comic books, and wonders how to let him down without hurting his feelings.
“That’s right,” yells Oscar. “He looks like “El Upa.” [“A character of Patoruzú, an Argentinian comic strip who uses his belly as a weapon].
I have to laugh because he does but mother is not amused. “Don’t ever let him hear you say that, he’s been very kind to us and that has to be appreciated, especially since we haven’t had much of that lately.”
But Oscar doesn’t want to let it go because he gets a kick out of Juán and starts imitating El Upa’s notorious klutziness, making believe it’s Juán till mother threatens to kill him if he doesn’t stop. He finally stopped trying to do Condorito’s [“The title character in a Chilean comic strip”] famous back flip when he nearly broke his neck by jumping backwards like the mai
n character, and landing onto the wall with a thud where mother really let him have it.
~~~
Juán takes us to movies and restaurants. He adores “Cantinflas” [“ Mario Moreno, the Mexican comedian”] as much as we do, and we spend many happy hours listening to him roar over the funny man with the multiple expressions, he considers the greatest ever. He is disturbing the others with his laughter and they try to shush him, but he turns around and in a thundering voice tells them to shush their grandmother. Mother lowers her eyes embarrassed but he continues laughing and making comments about the movie.
“They make a big deal about Charles Chaplin,” he says kicking an empty soda can as we exit the theatre. “But he had nothing on Cantinflas, now that’s a comedian, not that Mickey Mouse Chaplin.”
“It’s obvious you worship the man. You almost got us thrown out of there laughing so hard,” observes mother.
“You know how many times I’ve seen this movie? At least five, I believe.”
“Then you must know it by heart.”
“I do,” he says patting his belly. “Now I can’t wait to sink my teeth into some nice steak, all that laughter made me hungry.”
We go to a smoky restaurant two blocks away from the movie house and he orders steak for all of us. He goes to the bathroom and mother makes a comment.
“He’s nice, generous and a bachelor who obviously loves children, too bad I don’t like him “that way.”
I ask her if she could ever learn to like him “that way” and she shakes her head. “Todo entra por los ojos,” [“ looks are the first thing we see”] who could fall in love with those baggy pants and enormous belly?”
“He could lose weight,” I say, teasing her. “He could change his pants.”
“What about the funny shape of his head and his rough manners? He eats and drinks like a barbarian. How would I change that? He would have to be reborn.”
I had to admit she was right because he reminded me of the Vikings I had seen in the movies. I could see him with horns on his head, eating his food with his hands, dragging his women into a cave, and lifting dust as he entered a room like a hurricane.
Beyond the Snows of the Andes Page 20