When Tito Loved Clara

by Jon Michaud

  She looked up at him. A salamander wiggled in her hand. He had high cheekbones, small eyes, and pockmarked skin. He took off his Panama hat and showed a chicken scratch of tight curls on his head.

  “Es Papi,” he said. Without saying a word, she dropped the salamander and went into the house and found the framed photograph of her parents on their wedding day. She brought the photograph out and held it up beside his face.

  “Papi!” she said.

  “Sí!” he said, laughing.

  “Where's Mami?” she asked, looking back at the photograph. She was happy to see her father, but it was her mother—or the idea of her mother—that she missed the most.

  “She's in New York.” He glanced at the fields behind the house and then back at the road from which he had come. “Do you want to go to Santo Domingo with me, mi corazón? I have a car.”

  She said yes and, holding hands, they walked out to the road where his car was parked. She would not see the farm again until she was in college.

  “Where are we going, Papi?” she asked him.

  “Shopping,” he said, unlocking the door. “Wouldn't you like some new clothes, amorcita?” He spoke softly.

  Clara nodded. “Yes, Papi.”

  They drove into Santo Domingo. She sat in the front passenger seat. Her little body bounced around on the seat as her father maneuvered through the traffic on the unlined, potholed roads. Her eyes barely reached the bottom of the window. She looked up at the passing streets, the grimy facades of buildings, the undersides of trees, the sky—like looking up the city's skirt.

  “Can Mami come and meet us in Santo Domingo?” she asked.

  “No, mi amor,” he said. “But maybe you would like to go to New York with me to see her?”

  “Yes, Papi!” she said. “Please.”

  “Good,” he said. “We will go to New York. But first you need some clothes.”

  They parked and walked into a pedestrian shopping area lined with stores and food vendors. In store after store, they were fawned over by female clerks—a father buying clothes for his daughter. He bought her a brown dress with yellow ducks on the bodice; he bought her a pair of long pants made out of a thick, ribbed material she had never seen before; he bought her new underwear; he bought her a pink cotton cardigan; he bought her a pair of white tights, which looked like two squashed, milky snakes to her; he bought her a pair of shoes with hard, smooth leather soles; he bought her a raincoat made of a slick, slippery cloth. The last item of new clothing she had owned was her baptismal dress, a gift from her father's mother. Everything else she had worn in her life had been worn by someone else before her.

  “Papi, you have money?” she asked. Money was something her grandparents almost never had but the supply of bills in her father's wallet seemed endless.

  “Yes, Clara. I have money.”

  “New York money?”

  He smiled. “Yes, mija. New York money.”

  They had dinner in a restaurant and while they were eating a man came up to the table. The man was fat and not as tall as her father. He had longer hair, a tangled black corona around his head. He was introduced as Tío Miguel.

  “I want to go back to see mi abuelitos,” Clara said.

  “I thought you wanted to come to New York.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Don't you want to see your mother?”

  “Yes, but we need to tell Abuelo and Abuela.”

  “We are going to New York, Clara.”

  “No, Papi. I don't want—”

  He slapped her. Whap! went his hand against her face. Now she knew what the salamanders felt. She vowed never to do that to them again—a vow she would keep. Nobody in the restaurant paid any attention to her father striking her; it was just a man disciplining his child. The blow rang in her ears and silenced her. She was terrified of saying the wrong thing and getting slapped again. She would wait until she saw her mother and everything would be fine then.

  From the restaurant, they went back to the car. It was getting dark. Tío Miguel drove now, taking them along a road that ran beside the sea to the airport. The terminal was brightly lit and full of people. Her father led her into the men's room, where the smell of shit made her gag. Men, zipping their flies and turning away from the urinals, were startled to see a girl in the room. They gave an embarrassed smirk and left without washing their hands. In the stall, her father flushed away the stew of paper and feces in the toilet and told her to take off what she was wearing—a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. “Que flaquita!” he said, looking at her. She stood there, naked and trembling, as he dug among the bags. The tiles felt cold against her feet. Piece by piece, he made her put on almost everything they'd bought that afternoon. “It is cold in New York,” he explained.

  She had said nothing since he slapped her and she said nothing now.

  “Come, Clara. Don't be that way.”

  “Mami,” she whispered.

  “You'll see your mami soon,” he said.

  When they came out of the men's room, Tío Miguel said good-bye to them, hugging her father and kissing her on the head. She never saw him again and would never know who Tío Miguel actually was.

  Her father had only a small suitcase and she had nothing—he had thrown her old clothes into the trash in the men's room. They waited in line at the ticket counter and Clara started to feel overheated. She took off the raincoat and the cardigan. It was inconceivable to her that New York was cold enough that she would need to wear both. The ticket agent took her father's suitcase and put it on a baggage cart behind the counter. They crossed the terminal to a doorway where a man in a uniform sat behind a raised desk. Her father handed the man a small red book. The man looked through the book, flipping the pages rapidly. Then he stopped. Inside the book, like a patch of mold, was a wad of folded New York money. She saw it for only a second before it vanished into the man's palm. The man stood up and peered over the desk, laying the book flat, as he inspected her. Clara saw that the book was open to a page with her photograph. She had not seen her father in three years. Where did that photograph come from? It made her father seem more powerful and more mysterious than before. No words were exchanged. The man behind the desk nodded and handed the book back to her father.

  CLARA FELL ASLEEP during the flight and missed the descent into the city. She did not see the crisscross of lighted streets, the darkened parks burnished with week-old snow. She was woken by her father shaking her shoulder as the plane came in for its landing. Still groggy, she walked up the jetway into Kennedy Airport. They waited in a long line to stand before a judge, who looked at her picture in her father's book and asked him questions in English. This time there was no New York money in the book. For a moment, Clara thought they might be sent back. The judge looked down at her from his podium, nodded, and—boom—delivered his stamp into the book.

  “Welcome to New York, Clara,” her father said.

  A man was waiting for them in the terminal—a squat, burly Dominican man who was introduced as Don Felix.

  “Where is Mami?” she asked, looking up at her father.

  “At home. We are going now.”

  “Pobre muchacha,” said Don Felix, bending down to look at her. “You won't like New York at first. It's a hard place. But one day you will thank your father for bringing you.”

  Don Felix told them to wait by the revolving door while he went to get the car. Clara looked out into the night, the cabs and buses pulling up and departing, everyone dressed in heavy coats. They had not even left the airport building and she was already feeling cold. The draft came in from the revolving door and reached up the insides of her pants with its icy fingers. She felt like she was standing in a shallow, cold bath. When Don Felix's little car pulled up to the curb, she and her father walked out of the airport through the revolving door and the March wind struck her body. She had never felt cold with such force. It was like having a fever. All strength left her.

  “Ven, Clara,” said her father, and took h
er by the hand again and pulled her across the pavement into the car's frigid vinyl backseat.

  Don Felix and her father talked as they drove. She did not listen to what they said. She was too busy looking out the window. The car was taking her to see her mother! But the drive never seemed to end. Traffic slowed. There was always another road with more cars, more signs. Arrows pointing this way and that. At last, they were on a bridge and Clara could see the row of tall buildings with their lights on—a wall of lighted boxes reflected on the water. They came off the bridge and drove along the river. There was less traffic now and Don Felix was driving fast. The car had finally warmed up inside and she was feeling sleepy again. Then the highway ended and they were driving down a congested street. She looked out the window and saw a Dominican flag above the door of a bodega. There was a Dominican man waiting at the corner while his dog squatted. The signs were in Spanish. She recognized some of the words—comida, cambio, banco. They went through a traffic light and stopped.

  “Here we are, Clara,” said her father. “This is your home.”

  They had parked in front of a house that looked like it was still being built. There was an enormous metal trash container in the driveway, and the steps were made out of wooden planks on cement blocks. Across the street, dark as a jungle, was a park. On this side of the street, rising up a gentle slope were other houses in better condition than the one they'd stopped in front of.

  “How long do you think it's going to take to fix the place up?” asked Don Felix, gesturing out the window.

  “A year,” said her father. “Maybe two. Come, Clara. Say goodnight to Don Felix.”

  Clara did as she was told.

  Don Felix smiled at her. “I live just there, a couple of blocks,” he said, pointing up the street. “I have a boy, your age. I hope you will come and meet him.”

  Her father opened his door and went to the trunk of the car, where he retrieved his small suitcase. Don Felix was still looking at her, as if he wanted to say more. The door beside Clara opened and her father said, “Vámonos.” They climbed the planks, and as her father unlocked the door, she turned and looked back at Don Felix, who waved before driving away.

  “Vieja!” her father called out as he opened the door.

  They went into a small, dark entry hall with a flight of stairs going up. To the right was a door. A light was on at the top of the stairs and Clara could hear someone moving—the sandpapery scrape of slippers on a dirty wood floor. Her mother! Clara was ecstatic. The shadow of her mother came slowly into view at the top of the stairs. “Roberto? It's late.” She sounded like she had been asleep, and as she came down the steps, one heavy tread at a time, Clara saw that she was wearing a floral nightdress. Her ankles were encased in wooly gray socks.

  “Yes,” said her father. “It's late, but we made it.” He flipped a switch and the lights in the hallway came on and Clara could see the face of the woman descending toward them, one hand steadying herself on the banister, the other hand gathering the front of her nightdress around her engorged belly. The woman was not her mother.

  “Where's my mami?” asked Clara, her voice cracking. The woman was coming closer and closer. Only four steps separated them now.

  “This is your mami,” said her father, who was at her side. He reached up to take the hand of the woman on the stairs, helping her down to the landing. He kissed her once on the mouth and then bent over and kissed her stomach. “How's the baby?” he asked.

  “Ay, Roberto. He's kicking me all the time,” said the woman who was not her mother. She looked down at Clara. Clara had never seen a Dominican woman with such a straight, narrow nose, with such thin lips. Her hair was in curlers and the proximity of the great mass of her belly frightened her.

  “Kiss your mother,” said her father.

  “That's not my mother!” said Clara, edging away from her.

  Whap! The blow came from the woman and it had as much force as her father's slap earlier that evening. Clara staggered back a step and began weeping, her hands covering her face where the blow had struck her.

  “Listen to your father!” the woman said. “Don't be an ungrateful child.”

  “You're not my mother!” Clara yelled.

  “Clara, kiss your mother,” said her father, gently but insistently. He grasped her by the arm and pulled her toward the woman who was not her mother. “Kiss her now.”

  “No!” shouted Clara. Her hands were still over her face and she was sobbing.

  Encircling her waist with one arm, her father picked her up. He pulled her hands away from her face, which was wet with tears. Clara struggled, but her father was too strong. He lifted her until she was looking into the eyes of the woman who was not her mother. She had brown bloodshot eyes, the whites of which were gray at the edges, as if diseased.

  “Kiss her!” said her father.

  Clara moved her head closer, as if to comply with her father's request. At the last moment, she opened her mouth and caught a piece of the woman's cheek between her teeth. The woman screamed and Clara's father pulled her away, but not before Clara tasted the woman's blood in her mouth. Her father flung her to the floor and went to console the woman who was not her mother. She was sitting on the stairs with her hand on her face.

  “Dolores,” he called. “Estás bien?”

  Dolores looked up. “She's an animal!”

  Clara's father produced a handkerchief to blot the wound. “It's not deep,” he said as he dabbed the gash. “You'll be fine.”

  Dolores pushed Clara's father aside so that she could look directly at Clara, who was still on the floor where she had landed.

  “Now I see why your mother abandoned you, little animal,” Dolores said to her.

  “No!” said Clara. “She did not abandon me.”

  “Yes! Your mother has forgotten you. It is your father who remembered you. You will have to put her out of your mind, because now I am the only mother you will ever have.”

  CLARA AND LAUREN took their lunch at a café in the concourse that led from Newark Penn Station to their office building in the Gateway Center. Lauren and her partner, Abby, had gone through IVF the year before to conceive their daughter, Kate, and Clara often sought advice and comfort from her friend. Abby had had a miscarriage during her first cycle, but her successful delivery of a fullterm baby a year later gave Clara enormous hope. She told Lauren the latest news about the hysteroscopy. Lauren, with the same thoroughness she brought to litigation, had researched every aspect of reproductive medicine before she and Abby had embarked on their course of IVF.

  “You know, in the chatrooms we joined, a lot of people were saying that the whole T-shaped uterus thing is like a get-out-of-jail-free card for the doctors when they can't figure out another obvious reason. It's something to say that sounds better than ‘we don't know.’ It's good they're doing the hysteroscopy. That's how they will know for sure. I bet that's not the problem at all. I bet that you've just been unlucky, or maybe you've got some kind of infection. After all, you already had one healthy delivery.”

  Clara nodded, grateful for Lauren's strident certainty. Such confidence is what she needed to hear from Thomas the night before. He'd said some of the same things, but there was doubt or distraction in his voice.

  “I've been thinking of starting a fertility club,” Lauren said. “Kind of like a knitting circle, only we could tell our stories. Isn't that what you need? To hear that someone else has been through this and that everything turned out all right?”

  “Yes,” said Clara. “That's exactly what I need.”

  Tito

  Tito flipped open his cell phone and listened again to the message: “Mr. Moreno. This is Alicia Almonte. A valued possession of mine seems to have gone missing. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss the matter. . . . Perhaps I will have to fill out one of your surveys after all. Thank you.”

  It was eight o'clock in the morning, the week after the Almonte move and, with only beer and sour milk in hi
s refrigerator, Tito was on his way up Broadway to get some breakfast before starting work. He couldn't believe that she'd checked on the photograph. First time he steals from a client and he gets caught! He shouldn't have gone back to talk to her about Clara. It had obviously sent her down memory lane to the Julia Alvarez book. He had the photograph in his pocket, ready to return it and throw himself on her mercy. He'd already been into Kinko's the day before to have it scanned. A copy of the image was in his phone and another rested in his e-mail in-box at work. Even so, he didn't want to part with the original. He sensed that she would understand, that she would forgive him—at least he hoped so, hoped that some kind of connection had been forged because of their mutual curiosity about Clara.

  Tito closed his phone and went in through the streaked glass doors of El Malecon. He favored El Malecon over other local eateries for the simple reason that his ex-wife worked there. Her name was María Luisa; it was a green card marriage. She was the cousin of his mami's friend Merida. Tito had been paid a thousand dollars on the day of the ceremony at the Bronx courthouse, and another thousand was promised to him once the green card was safely obtained. This was cheaper than the going rate, but Merida was an old friend; she and his mami had known each other as kids in Barahona. The ceremony took place on a bleak winter day, just a week after María Luisa had arrived from Santo Domingo. The bride didn't speak more than a dozen words of English. She was young and fat, uneducated but sweet. She said her vows through chattering teeth, which the justice of the peace probably ascribed to nerves. Tito played his part and gave her a big kiss, tilting her great bulk slightly as he embraced her.

  The reception was back at Merida's: chicharrones and Presidentes, bachata and merengue. Then he didn't see her for a few weeks. That was their honeymoon. Merida was taking care of the legwork. She appeared with an apartment lease, which he had to sign; she opened a joint bank account for them and found María Luisa the job at El Malecon. In the week before the INS interview, Tito returned to Merida's apartment. María Luisa had gained some English and lost some weight. With Merida as their teacher, they went over their story again and again. How they met, where they had gone on vacations together, when the other's birthday fell, what their favorite foods were, what music they listened to and movies they loved, who their in-laws were. Tito, much practiced in fantasy, had no trouble with the notion of a fabricated marriage, a fabricated life. He even offered little twists and enhancements to the story Merida had conceived for them. The week of study paid off. They passed the interview and María Luisa was approved for resident alien status.