When Tito Loved Clara

by Jon Michaud

  “How did it happen, Deysei? Can you tell me that?”

  “I don't really know how it happened, Tía. It was like it happened all of a sudden. One night Mami was out late. Raúl came home from work and he was all full of himself. I don't know how to describe it. He got like that sometimes, all gangsta. Like he was waiting to surprise everyone with how bad he was. Maybe he'd been doing something he shouldn't have been doing, you know, for his probation or whatever, and he was acting that way because he was getting away with something. I didn't smell no alcohol on him, but maybe he was high. I was watching Gossip Girl. Raúl sat down and started watching it with me, saying things like ‘stupid white bitches’ and ‘dumbass white girls, what do they know?’ But there was this sex scene and Raúl got all quiet. He looked over at me. ‘You ever do that with a boy?’ I said no. And then he said, ‘You know you finer than any of the girls on that show.’ ” Deysei mimicked Raúl's inflection with uncanny accuracy.

  “What did you say to him?” asked Clara.

  “I didn't say nothing. But he kept asking me more stuff like that. ‘Did a boy ever do this to you?’ And then he kissed me. ‘Did a boy ever do this to you?’ And then he touched me.”

  “You let him?”

  Deysei said nothing. She was blushing.

  “He was gentle, Tía. It felt good. Not like the other boys I been with. I don't know. I didn't want him to stop.”

  “You didn't say no?”

  “No, Tía. I know you can't believe it, but he was nice. He didn't do nothing to hurt me.”

  “What about contraception?” Clara asked.

  “What?”

  “Condoms.”

  “He said we didn't need that. He said I wouldn't get pregnant this time of the month.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Yes. Mami been sleeping with him a long time and she never got pregnant.”

  “Your mother's on the pill, Deysei.”

  The girl said nothing.

  Clara asked, “What happened when you were finished?” “He said it was going to be our secret, that we weren't going to say nothing to my mami when she got home.”

  “It must have been weird when she did.”

  “I pretended I was asleep. Raúl went out.”

  “You don't think she ever suspected?”

  “No. Raúl mostly didn't pay no attention to me after that. But I think he was acting that way so Mami wouldn't know. Sometimes he'd wink at me or pinch me when she wasn't looking. I thought we were going to do it again, but we were never alone in the apartment before Mami left for Santo Domingo.”

  “Oh, Deysei.”

  “What, Tía?”

  “Are you in love with him?”

  “I don't know what that feels like, Tía,” said Deysei.

  “Have you been talking to him?” Clara asked.

  Deysei would not look her in the eye. “Well?”

  “I talk to him sometimes.”

  “Have you seen him since you moved out here?”

  “No. I guess he's been busy.” Deysei sounded disappointed. “And did you tell him about being pregnant?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  CLARA WAS STILL mulling over all of this a few days later when Thomas drove her to the fertility clinic for the hysteroscopy. Deysei's pregnancy and her own fertility issues had become entwined in her mind. Today she would learn if she could have another child, and the weight of that verdict, like a sudden awareness of her own mortality, had put her in a fretful mood. She knew she'd been acting strange for a while and, in the Odyssey, Thomas asked her if she was all right.

  “There's something I need to tell you,” said Clara, as they waited at a light. A fateful sentence, she thought.

  “What is it?”

  “A long time ago, when I was just a little older than Deysei is now, I got pregnant. I'm sorry—somehow, I feel like this is something I should have told you before we got married, before we started all this fertility stuff, but I've been putting it off and putting it off.”

  Thomas looked over at her. “What happened?”

  “I got an abortion,” she said.

  There was a long silence. “That must have been difficult,” he said. She wished she'd said something sooner. There was a time for such confessions and the seventh year of marriage was definitely not it.

  “Yes,” she said. “It was difficult.”

  “Who was the father?”

  “A boy I knew in Inwood. A sort of secret boyfriend.” Here we go, she thought.

  “A secret boyfriend?” Thomas asked. “My father wouldn't let me go out on dates. I told you about all that. In his ideal world, I would never have spoken to a boy until I left his house. If he saw a male customer flirting with me at the store, he'd yell at them. ‘You think my daughter's a whore? Do you? Pay up and get out.’ So I had to keep the relationship a secret from him.”

  “What was the secret boyfriend's name?” asked Thomas.

  “Tito Moreno,” she said.

  “Did he know that he'd gotten you pregnant?”

  “No. I never told him.”

  “So, you just took care of it?”

  “Yes. On my own.”

  “What happened to Tito? Are you still in touch with him?”

  “No. I haven't seen him since I went to college. I have no idea where he is or what he is doing now.”

  “Do you think you should have told him?” Thomas asked.

  “I don't know. It was a crazy time, right around when my mother found me again. If I told Tito, I'm pretty sure he would have wanted us to get married and to keep it. I would probably never have gone to college. I never would have met you. Guillermo would never have been born. I mean, that's what we're talking about here. A completely different life. And a life without you and Gilly isn't one I want. By the time I realized I was pregnant, I was already living in Queens. There was a place in Manhattan that did the—” She stopped. “But . . .”

  “What? What is it?”

  “It's all part of why I'm so freaked out about this—about today. Even though I know it was the right thing for me to do, I think about that aborted baby all the time. A lot more than I think about Tito. It was just a little less further along than the one we lost last year. I sometimes think I'm being punished for not having that baby. I should have put it up for adoption. I was just so scared and alone. I couldn't tell anyone.”

  “If you were really being punished, then what about Gilly?”

  “I don't know. Who said curses have to be logical? They aren't. They're random. It's when you least expect it that it comes back and bites you in the ass. Having Guillermo almost made it worse because, for a while, it seemed like I wasn't going to be punished. For a while there, I felt like I was getting away with something.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said. It would be a couple of weeks before Clara understood that her husband's words were not intended to console her, that they were a confession of his own.

  THE SHINING STAR Center for Reproductive Medicine was housed in a brown cement building on a secondary thorough-fare connecting Millwood and Springfield. To Clara, it always seemed like a strange stretch of road, neither fully commercial nor fully residential. There was a nowhereness to the streetscape. Modest split-level houses were interspersed with gas stations, medical plazas, and the sort of low-lying office buildings that were usually home to mortgage brokers, fly-by-night investment firms, and insurance agencies. Shining Star seemed, from the remains of the scratched-off lettering on the glazed front doors, to have been home to a financial services company called Alpine Securities. Patients entered through glass doors on the ground level and went up the stairs to a waiting room that had obviously once been a lobby. The first time Clara and Thomas came to the center—their second choice upon discovering that the esteemed fertility clinic at Summit Hospital did not accept their insurance—Clara had almost turned around and left after catching sight of the waiting room with its uncomfortable-looking chairs, its imitation Fauvist s
till lifes (painted by one of the doctors, she later learned), its massive console TV tuned to a conservative political pundit's talk show, its coffee station with powdered creamer and pastries wrapped in cellophane. It reminded her of a place she did not want to remember—the waiting room of the abortion clinic. But, before she could turn and pull Thomas back down the stairs, she saw something that made her stop. On the far wall of the room, opposite the receptionist's window, there was a large bulletin board bearing dozens of photographs of newborn babies. While Thomas went to get the registration paperwork, she was drawn helplessly toward the board. As she came closer, she saw that many of the pictures were either thank-you notes or birth announcements with handwritten expressions of gratitude. We are so blessed. . . . Thank you for bringing our little angel into the world. . . . We were about to give up hope. . . . Clara looked at all those little faces on curling photo paper. Black babies, Asian babies, white babies, Latino babies, mixed-race babies. All of them with the same open, curious, and innocent expression of life as not yet lived. Every one of these babies had been made here, she remembered thinking, fertilized in petri dishes in some room not a hundred feet from where she stood. Right now, in a darkened, silent lab nearby, eggs and sperm were being united, fertilized eggs were dividing, life was being created. Whatever reservations she may have had upon arriving vanished in the presence of those pictures, the best evidence there could be that the place knew its business—even though the old stockbroker's disclaimer applied just as well here: Past performance is no guarantee of future success.

  She looked at those babies each time they came to the clinic in the months that followed that first visit—the visit that had concluded with Dr. Davidian, in full game-show-host mode, saying, “Let's get you pregnant!” She looked at them again this morning, searching for new faces, for proof that the clinic's success was ongoing and contagious, that the place had not lost its magic. When she'd finished her inspection, she went and sat next to her husband, who was already engrossed in a copy of Sports Illustrated. He immersed himself in baseball the same way he immersed himself in sleep and, formerly, work, she thought—completely. How she wished for that kind of focus, that ability to exclude things from her skittering mind. This time of year, in the run-up to the World Series, he always became a little remote, his brain consumed by pennant races, triple-crown pursuits, and God knows what else. Perhaps it was merely her own anxieties at play, but his withdrawal seemed more severe this year.

  There had been one bit of good news, though. He'd had an interview the previous week with the New York office of a company that indexed and disseminated trade publications. A second interview had been scheduled at the company's corporate offices in northern Virginia on Friday. Thomas was going to spend the night with his mother in Bethesda and return on Saturday.

  “How are you feeling?” asked Thomas, as if sensing her line of thought.

  “I'm OK,” she said.

  “You worried about the anesthesia?”

  “No. Not so much. Actually, I could really use the sleep.”

  Thomas laughed and touched her arm. The nurse called her name and she went into the consultation room alone so that they could take her weight and blood and ask her privately if her husband beat her. They asked all their patients this every time they came for an appointment—as if spousal abuse might suddenly erupt during the course of treatment. Every time, Clara said, “No,” and every time, the nurse apologized and explained that they were obliged to ask. The question always depressed Clara, and this morning it struck her more than usual. What would have happened if she had said yes?

  She went back out to the waiting room, clutching a cotton ball to the inside of her elbow. A few minutes later, she and Thomas were told to head downstairs to the surgical suite. Another nurse admitted them to a locker room, where Clara stripped and donned a white paper smock and sterile hospital socks. Thomas sat on the bench and watched her, not saying anything. She felt as self-conscious undressing before him as she ever had—like the first time they'd slept together. She didn't know what it was. Perhaps the distance she felt between them these past weeks, or the weird stirring of her emotions that had been caused by the confession in the car, or just her anxiety about the outcome of the day's procedure. They hadn't had sex since the night of Yunis's departure. Clara had been waiting to see if Thomas would take the initiative for a change, but he hadn't. So much hung on this inspection of her insides. She gave the key to him. “It's going to be fine,” he said, and kissed her. “No matter what happens, it's going to be fine.” She gave him a half-hearted nod and went through to the nurse. Thomas would wait upstairs.

  The nurse led her to a bed behind a curtain. She was told to stay there until the doctor was ready. She got under the sheets and listened to the other nurses talking at the nearby station as they looked through a menu for lunch.

  “I'm hungry. I want lasagna.”

  “Girl, you eat lasagna every day.”

  “I know. I like lasagna.”

  “Lasagna likes you, too. You better be careful.”

  “You calling me fat?”

  “I'm just saying.”

  All of which reminded Clara that she had been fasting since mid-night, reminded her how her life had become ruled by the demands of obstetricians and gynecologists. The nurse parted the curtain and smiled at her. “OK,” she said. “They're ready.” She had a wheelchair and Clara sat down and was pushed past the other curtained beds in the ward, occupied by women who'd just had eggs extracted or transferred into their wombs or by women undergoing the kind of procedure that was about to be performed on her—exploratory, evaluative. Down the hallway, in the operating theater, the doctor, the anesthesiologist, and a nurse were waiting, all in their scrubs. The removal of her clothes and her transport in a wheelchair left her feeling like an invalid. Suddenly, she wished Thomas could be in the room with her. Whatever his faults, he was usually calm and sensible. She stood up from the wheelchair and got onto the table, sliding her legs into the stirrups. She had the feeling of vulnerability that she always had before a gynecological exam, opening the most private part of herself to someone who was, essentially, a stranger.

  “Are you ready?” asked the doctor.

  Clara nodded.

  “You might feel a little tickle in your throat,” said the anesthesiologist, “but by the time you do, this'll all be over.” He applied the mask to her face.

  CLARA RECEDED FROM that suburban New Jersey operating room, receded back through the years to her bedroom in her father's house in Inwood, where she lay in a dreamless sleep. Into this blackness and silence came Dolores's voice:

  “Wake up!”

  The covers were pulled from her and a stick was brought down on her legs. Clara became fully conscious of everything at once: the shouted words, the sunlight coming through the thin curtains, and the terrible fact that she was no longer on the farm with her abuelos—that the farm, for her, had ceased to exist. She thrashed among the bedsheets, looking for a way back into sleep, back into her old life, as the second blow hit her.

  “¿Qué pasa?” said Clara, freeing herself from the threadbare linens and jumping off the bed. “¿Qué pasa?” she cried. The room was small and cold and unfamiliar and there was no place for her to go that was out of range of Dolores's stick, a wooden extension pole for a paint roller that was covered in white and yellow drippings. It had a threaded steel top, which struck her on the knee as she tried to dodge the third blow. Dolores was tall, with an almost masculine build, and long arms. Clara could see the crescent wound her bite the night before had left on Dolores's cheek.

  As if reading her thoughts, Dolores said, “You think I'm going to let you bite me again, you filthy child?” She swung and Clara blocked the stick with the meat of her palm. The sting sizzled from her elbow to her shoulder and then into her chest like an electric shock.

  “I'm going to tell my papi!” she cried.

  “Ha!” exclaimed Dolores, striking her again, this time on the s
houlder. “If you tell your father that I beat you, I will only beat you harder!” She swung again, the stick rapping against Clara's forearm.

  “¿Por qué? ¿Por qué?” asked Clara, weeping and looking for some-place to hide. But there was no such place.

  THOSE FIRST WEEKS of her life in New York—before she started school—were spent almost entirely within the walls of the house, seemingly always within range of Dolores's stick, which she used to compensate for the impediment of her swollen midsection, poking Clara with it if she didn't pay attention, rapping the floor with it to emphasize the seriousness of something she was saying. Clara might as well have been in prison. And like a prisoner, she was kept to a strict schedule and subject to random acts of cruelty. Every morning she was berated from sleep, struck with the stick. She put on her clothes and went downstairs.

  Downstairs was Dolores's domain. Downstairs was dirt. Down-stairs was the disarray of a house that had never been fully moved into, a house that was only half-habitable, semi-renovated. Down-stairs were filthy floors that Clara would sweep and scrub with a handheld brush. Downstairs were dusty windows that she would clean with newspapers she could not read. Downstairs were photo-graphs of Dolores's family with their bony noses and high-yellow complexions. There was no picture of Clara, no picture of anyone in her father's family. Downstairs was an archaeology of dirty dishes in daily layers going back a week. Downstairs was a place far from what she had imagined when she thought of her parents' life in New York. Downstairs was the refrigerator, which bore drops of blood from leaking plastic meat packets, hardened mounds of molding cheese, the sour scrim of milk. Downstairs was Dolores herself, demanding, displeased, uncomfortable, talking constantly on the phone, complaining about her, listing her woes to family members near and far. When Clara asked about where her father was the answer was always the same way: “He's at the store.”

  Downstairs the stick was never far away.

  On the farm, she had come and gone as she pleased, unremarked and unscheduled. Only darkness reigned her in. But here her life was reduced to her bedroom, the ground floor, and the basement. The basement was unfinished, with a dirt floor and no lights, the only illumination coming through the small cellar windows. In a corner stood the washing machine, a cantankerous, jittery white beast that gurgled and snorted its way through the loads, foam bubbling at the seams of the door, a drool of water leaking out from its undercarriage. When it had whined and barked its last, Clara took each item out and hung it on the lines her father had strung from wall to wall. The lines were high—intended for Dolores's reach—and the wet clothes seemed to get heavier and heavier as she worked her way through the load, until she could barely lift her arms, could hardly pinch into place the ancient clothespins, smooth and pallid, with rusty springs and eyes like dragonflies. Clara never made it through hanging a load without dropping something—usually something white: her father's undershirt, her stepmother's brassiere with padded cups the size of pot holders—onto the floor, where it immediately became filthy. When Dolores saw the soiled item hanging on the line, she would bring out the old wooden washboard and make Clara wash the soiled garment in the bathtub, scrubbing the dirt from the cloth and rubbing the skin from her fingers, up and down on the ribbed wood, strumming and strumming to no tune.