His sister’s son explained what had been happening in the faraway place. Martín was distressed; he didn’t want to know about his traitor wife. He didn’t want to hear about the war, he said. Little Stepbackwards was shocked: Martín was able to speak?
“There’s no war on, Uncle. It ended over twenty years ago.”
The young man wouldn’t stop talking, something about how much his daughters and Candelario missed him. Something about it being time to go home. Something about how he would do all he could to help him.
His daughters? Candelario? How could he ever trust them now, no doubt the Federales had raised them and filled their heads with ideas. He jumped up, frantic, began kicking the walls. Little Stepbackwards tried to calm him down, reassure him.
“You have to return to your family, Uncle. We’re waiting for you. Please, Uncle.”
Martín pleaded with Little Stepbackwards in sharp gestures to be taken back to his bed. He extracted the last letter he’d received from Atanacio from a bag and returned to the room where his sister’s son was waiting. He handed the letter to his nephew and asked him to read it. When he did, Martín turned his back and stared at the wall.
“I don’t understand, Uncle.”
“Traitors,” he said. “My wife, the Federales.”
“That’s not what it says, Uncle. You misunderstood. It says that she fought beside Uncle Atanacio to defend the ranch, and that the Federales apprehended both of them. But that happened many years ago, and now she’s waiting, all your children are waiting.”
Martín’s affliction grew into frenzy and he started punching the wall. By the time Little Stepbackwards could get to him, he had knocked his head hard against it, too. Martín brought his fingers to his scalp and saw that he was bleeding. He stared at his hands and saw fluid, fluid was leaking from his body and now it wouldn’t stop. The skin hadn’t worked as his dam, what was he going to do? He was going to die, to die! He started bellowing.
Little Stepbackwards called for other orderlies, and together they subdued Martín, wrestling him to the floor. He felt someone’s knees jabbing into his back, and somebody had grabbed him around the neck.
He closed his eyes. They vanished. But the pain persisted. “Aaaaaahhhhh.”
Little Stepbackwards told the young man his visit was over.
Martín was terrified. They’d transfer him to another prison and he’d be put in a dark Mexican cell. The Federales in his country were sons of bitches; they had no respect for life. It was so nice here.
He made an effort to calm himself down. Would the blood stop? A nurse bandaged his head, they were going to take him to another room, “estiches, estiches” he heard someone say.
His sister’s son stood up and walked over to Martín before the apprehensive gaze of Little Stepbackwards and the others.
“Uncle, Uncle. Por favor, don’t do anything to him. It’s all right, I understand. Do you have any message for your wife and children? They’re anxious for news about you.”
Martín drew a valley with wavy hills and Jesús on the cross. The blood dripped from his head and stained the paper. Little Stepbackwards told the young man in a bumbling Spanish to tell them they’d see each other in the next life.
The young man hugged his uncle before leaving, and never returned.
Shortly afterward, Martín learned that the professor would be coming to live in the building for a few months.
4
Landslide, 2008—2009
First I got a bad headache—it happened just after Christmas when I was walking around the mall. Then came the nausea, always at strange times like after having a cup of tea or eating a salad. I attributed everything to the stress of my relationship with Fabián. He sent emails and called me from Buenos Aires, but I already had an inkling that our affair wasn’t going anywhere, not now, not if we tried again a thousand times over. Fabián was losing his way, adrift in his hallucinations. One of his emails read: “it’s the ice-cream i like the most, nobody can compete with the kind they make here. the dulce de leche, it’s a poem. i had a panic attack on the airplane and felt as though I had jumped out with a parachute. i split in two, one of me watched everything from the window of the plane and the other me raced like a bullet toward the ground because the parachute wouldn’t open. this morning i woke up around six and felt compelled to go out into the yard. when i got there, i heard a buzzing sound and looked up in time to see an object coming straight at me. it was me and the unopened parachute. i fell to the ground to avoid the impact. late, late. i shut my eyes and when i opened them again nobody was there. i took off lickety-split thinking i had survived, that from now on everything would be different. but then i saw the mangled body of the skydiver, and i was filled with dread.”
I wanted to help him out, to feel as though I were an indispensable part of his life. But in the end I realized that none of it was really up to me, and I started feeling asphyxiated by him. Sometimes I thought it was just my pride and stubborn character: I wanted to go back to him because I couldn’t accept being dropped so brusquely; I’d rewrite the narrative of our affair, and this time I would be the one to leave, coming out on top. Other times I was overwhelmed by a desire to surrender entirely to him, sure I’d never find anyone else like Fabián; our moments happened in fits and starts, but they did happen. We both bought into that dynamic, we were incapable of cutting ties completely, incapable of surrendering completely, lost in the ambiguity of loving and not loving.
A week of vomiting gave momentum to my growing hunch, and a visit to the pharmacy and a pregnancy test established the fact. I found truth in a bathroom bedecked with Jeff Buckley concert posters. I couldn’t sleep: I was terrified of Fabián’s reaction when the time came to fess up. I didn’t want to give him the news by phone or email. It was better to wait till he got back in January.
Fabián returned on a Monday. I let him rest on Tuesday morning, then plucked up the courage to go to his home. He opened the door and led me upstairs, and I told him to please sit down on the couch. Woodstock curled up next to him. I told him the news and it left him speechless. When he caught his breath, he said that he was happy for me and that he would be responsible for the baby, but that he wasn’t about to let himself feel “tied down” to me. Then he remarked on how little we had actually slept together before he left. Maybe someone else had been there in his absence? He saw the expression of rage on my face and tried to apologize, but it was too late: in those days a single word out of place was enough to flip my switch, and yes, there had been many words out of place.
Later, when we talked by phone, he suggested that I go to Planned Parenthood and wanted me to know that having the baby wasn’t obligatory. I hurled the phone across the room.
I had considered telling La Jodida and asking her to accompany me to Planned Parenthood, but I no longer trusted her the way I used to. So I went alone and felt miserable. A plump black woman with a gummy smile courteously explained that what I was considering now was more common than I realized, one out of three women under the age of forty-five in the United States had terminated a pregnancy. I winced at the thought of an infinite cemetery of unborn children. They gave me brochures with photos of fetuses from illegal abortions. I learned how the morning-after pill worked. I had a bout of dry heaving in the parking lot on my way out.
I met with Fabián in the Chip & Dip. I told him I refused to have an abortion. He was more resolute now and said he forbade me to have the child. He told me again how he had lost his wife, how it triggered his depression, and the idea of bringing another life into the world was intolerable.
I asked Taco Hut for time off. My nights were restless. I obsessed over Fabián’s words and inflexibility, wishing I could make up my own mind, but his attitude carried too much weight. I began worrying about my own future, thinking in his terms, seeing things from his vantage point: I wouldn’t be able to study if I had to take care of a child, I told myself; I’d have to give up writing and drawing.
I w
as trying to convince myself that it was the proper decision. But I couldn’t, not entirely.
Fabián called again late into the night. Better not do it in Landslide. We should go to El Paso next weekend. He’d make the inquiries.
Two weeks later, we headed for El Paso. We found a room at the Holiday Inn, and Fabián spent most of his time in the cold water of the swimming pool, hiding away from me. We took a cab to the clinic and got lost in the tiny streets near the border; the skyline of Juárez cut a silhouette into the distant sky, a darker sky than the one over El Paso, choked as it was by the factory smog.
There were two benches in the clinic’s waiting room. The nurse attending me had thin, bony arms, and her black hair was tied back into a long braid.
“Who referred you to us?”
“A friend who teaches in El Paso.”
“Honestly, I just don’t get you. We could have done this in Landslide. It’s sheer paranoia. I mean, don’t you think we’re a little old to be sneaking off? Anyway, Planned Parenthood was clear about how strict their privacy code is.”
He shrugged his shoulders as if to say well, too late now.
Once I was in the room, the nurse told me to get undressed and handed me a gown. I hopped onto the examining table and waited for the doctor to come in, Ana Carranza at your service. Fabián sat next to me, I squeezed his hand apprehensively.
Dr. Carranza gave me an injection, I closed my eyes and when I opened them again a few hours later, Fabián was no longer beside me. I was still woozy when the nurse approached and helped me sit up, which I did with difficulty. I located Fabián sitting on a nearby bench. He was leafing through a magazine; he came over and embraced me. I would have belted him if only I’d had the strength.
Fabián remained withdrawn the rest of the way back, and he hardly spoke. My whole body was sore, but the cramps in my stomach hurt the worst, I felt frail. I slept a lot.
The next few days I stayed in the studio convalescing—took it easy, tried not to worry, to get back on my feet. No strong painkillers, just a few Tylenol. At times the cramps got so bad my eyes would water and I’d fall to the floor writhing in pain. I took advantage of the time to reread the first volume of Neal Gaiman’s comic-book series The Sandman; I was still so impressed with the blue of “Sleep of the Just,” the phantasmagorical atmosphere in “Imperfect Hosts,” a sentence in “Dream a Little Dream of Me”—Dream dream dreeeeeam . . . whenever I want to. . . . All I have to do . . . is . . . dreeeeam . . .—the dark colors and the way he framed the vignettes in “A Hope in Hell.”
I should devote myself to reading and nothing else. Yeah, I could be a professional reader.
5
Rodeo, Mexico; various US cities, 1994–1997
Jesús woke up with a nasty toothache and went out to find a pharmacy. A sign taped to the frosted glass at the entrance of La Indolora read “Injections 3 Pesos.” The woman who attended him had butt-length black hair and was sporting electric-blue nail polish. She wouldn’t stop talking and he could see her chipped front tooth every time she smiled. The yakkety-yak grated on Jesús’s nerves, but luckily he found a distraction on his way out: there was a scale just beside the door. For three pesos they also took your blood pressure.
Jesús was short of change; he looked back at the woman and took off his glasses as he approached her. She had already guessed his intentions, though, and held out a few coins before he even opened his mouth. Jesús thanked her and asked for her name, eyes lowered and rubbing his hands nervously.
“Renata. You just passing through?”
“I live here now. Only been a few weeks.”
“What brings you to this two-bit town?”
“I like two-bit. I get tired of having people around all the time.”
“People here aren’t grateful for what they got,” Renata said. “I was in Juárez for a while, but had some trouble and came back home. Now I got a good job and I’m not complaining.”
Jesús walked out of La Indolora with her telephone number stuffed in his pocket.
The next day they went to see a Jackie Chan movie together, but Renata didn’t care for it—“I know it’s just a movie and not real life, but it’s so violent”—and afterward he took her to have dinner at Restaurante Veracruz, following recommendations he’d been given when he asked around for a classy joint. The floors were decorated with mosaic tiles and there were flower arrangements on the tables. Two men locked in a heated argument were busy draining a bottle of mescal. A redhead was fully concentrated on a guidebook to Mexico; her backpack rested on the chair beside her.
Renata was wearing a long blue dress and had done her hair up in an intricate weave—arabesques that had taken over an hour to braid when she got out of the shower. She was so impressed by Jesús’s manners and that he was spending so much money. When he told her he was teaching at the nuns’ school, she said they must pay awful good.
“Two hundred fifty pesos,” he said.
“Really? That’s hardly anything.”
“When I need plata, I head across the border for a few months. I worked on a tobacco plantation and in gas stations. I’ve done things like pick oranges in California, planted asparagus, harvested rice in Texas. The worst thing was cleaning latrines. It ain’t such a bad life.”
“Why don’t you stay then?
“’Cause when I’m there, I miss being here.”
The following weekend they went on another date. They kissed under the dim lights of a karaoke bar where a pot-bellied dwarf in mariachi garb sang Pedro Infante songs. It was June, but the Christmas decorations were still up: a plastic Santa wiggled on top of a speaker, a dried-out tree covered in gaudy ornaments withered in the corner, a garland hanging from the ceiling spelled out MERRY CHRISTMAS.
Jesús tried to squeeze her breasts out on the dark street, but she wouldn’t let him. He invited her over; Renata said no.
“I like that,” he said. “I like that you ain’t like those blonds up north.”
“My madre, may she rest in peace, taught me that a man should respect you before you let anything happen.”
Stupid old bitch, Jesús thought. But he was in no rush—not like he had too many options in Rodeo anyway, and Renata wasn’t half bad. He had concocted his plan over the past few days, and a stable partner was an essential part of it. Someone in town to dispel suspicion. Provide respectability. Someone who occupied his house when he was away, took care of his stuff. One thing was sure: the journey had to continue. Staying in one place the rest of his life wasn’t an option.
A little while later, Jesús contacted a black-market dealer who moved hot cars. He told him he could open a new supply line. He had no intention of crossing the border: all he wanted to do was exploit some of his contacts in Juárez to float the cars, resell them, and make some cash in commissions.
Jesús soon became a little big shot in Rodeo thanks to his thriving car business. Buyers from neighboring towns and cities contacted him. He relished the local notoriety, however minor, and was convinced that his dry spell had come to an end. People got to know him in the bars, he hooked himself up for cheap coke, and in the bordellos putas fought over him because he was flush and he paid in cash.
He took Renata with him to Juárez. They went shopping in Futurama, Renata swooned over the sparkly brand-name shops. “It’s your lucky day,” Jesús told her, “someone just paid back a debt, so I can buy you anything you want.” She hugged him gleefully and began her march through the stores “quick, before you change your mind.” Jesús sat in overstuffed armchairs and waited while she tried on dresses and shoes; he answered in monosyllables when she came out to show him a pair of pants or a bag, and kept quiet when she chose something he thought was too pricey. They left the plaza laden with bags; Renata was chatty and cheerful, he kept repeating under his breath, “It’s over, puerca, it’s over.”
They finally slept together on the trip, it was the first time. She was flat chested, and he offered to pay for new tits. Renata blu
shed: the operation frightened her, but she’d think it over.
Jesús suggested she move in with him. Renata said no: what would people say? Things should follow the proper order. Jesús thought, who the fuck do you think you are, imbécil, be glad I’m letting you live. But then he figured it didn’t really make a big difference anyway.
Within two days he proposed and she accepted. Two months later they were married.
“FUKING HORE IF YOU ONLY NEW. i cant stand you i cant STAND YOU. ain’t your falt coz I HATE ALL. They talk and talk and say no respec me but they all craizy. I now is my money, no money no atention, $$$, oh yeah, they all like that. FUCKIN opinions all the time, rats ain’t got brains. Judgement Day is nie, im a angel im God im KILL THEM ALL”
The Book of Revelations was growing. The notebooks were hidden in secret spots all over town. He sent some of them to María Luisa’s address in Albuquerque.
On one of his first trips to Juárez after getting married, Jesús fell into temptation and crossed over to El Paso. He found a telephone booth on Santa Fe Street and called his sister’s number. A deep voice answered the phone.
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