TIO
Rachel de los Santos Taylor lay on the bed and looked up at her husband.
Tommy Taylor was a big man, thick and powerful from years working on construction crews, operating heavy rigs and digging ditches. His wrists were almost thicker than her upper arms, and he could easily wrap one hand around her neck. He had done that often when they were dating, and she had thrilled at the warmth of his touch, and at the time his strength had provided her with a sense of security and protection she had not felt since she was a young child.
Rachel's parents were immigrants. They came to the United States illegally when she was only four years old, leaving their small town in Mexico on foot and gradually traveling to the border and crossing over with her and her brother Jorge in tow. They had eked a bare existence for several years, her father taking whatever jobs he could and her mother doing the same. In Mexico they had been fairly educated people: both were teachers at the local school. In the United States, however, they were little more than animals, forced to do the demeaning work that no employer could convince a white person to do.
Still, neither of them complained, not even on the day when her father broke his back. He was picking oranges in one of the fields outside San Diego, standing on a rickety ladder that had probably been carved out of balsa wood by some miserly ladder-maker in the mid eighteen hundreds. The ladder snapped beneath him, cracking to pieces under his weight and sending him plummeting to the ground below. He landed on a root, fracturing three vertebrae.
Suddenly the family had even less income, and hospital bills they had no hope of paying. Rachel – only she was not Rachel then, but Raquel – had vivid memories of her mother going to the bathroom, the only semi-private place in the studio apartment where the family stayed. Mother would spend hours in that room, flushing the toilet over and over again in an effort to cover up the sound of her weeping. But of course in that room in the barrio, where the walls were so thin that they cracked under the weight of the roaches that crawled on them, mere flushing of a toilet could not hope to hide the devastating sound of a mother's tears.
Soon it looked though the family would have to flee again, but this time they would be running back to Mexico. The bills were coming faster and faster, and finally there was no more money, no job, no hope.
That was why Tío had seemed like such a blessing to the family. Miguel was Raquel's uncle, her mother's youngest brother. He was living in Los Angeles, and had made money running a Xeroxing business, servicing lawyers and architects, people who needed massive amounts of documentation copied and processed. Enough money, in fact, that he offered to pay off their hospital bills and move them out to Los Angeles to live with him.
Of course, Raquel's parents accepted his generous offer, and the family moved to the City of Angels to start over yet again. Her father helped Miguel in the office however he could, Mother worked at a fast food establishment, and all was perfect. For a while, at least.
When things changed, it was very gradual. Raquel would be playing with Jorge, and Miguel would come into her room and watch them. It made her feel safe and protected, to have her big strong uncle watching over them – watching over her – so very closely. Soon, he came into the room to play, too. And after they were finished playing, he would sweep them into his arms, hold them tight, and whisper that he loved them. "Les quiero," he would say, and kiss them.
One day, Raquel was playing alone. Jorge was at the office with her father, and she was playing with her dolls, dressing them, and gradually became aware that Miguel was watching her.
"Hello, tío," she said.
"Hola, linda," he replied. Hello beautiful.
He sat by her as always, and played with her as she made believe that her dolls were famous movie stars come to spend the day with her. Before long, however, Miguel stopped playing. He stared at her, then said he was tired, and sat back against her bed, the bed he had purchased for her when they moved in.
He pulled her to him, and held her, and said, "Te quiero," as he had always done. But this time, the words left her cold inside. His touch was different, too. His hands and arms were sweaty, and his breath, usually smelling pleasantly of mint and coffee, was foul.
He kissed her then, not on the cheek, but on the lips. "Te quiero," he whispered again. It meant "I love you." Then he said, "Te amo," which also meant "I love you." But it was strange to hear those words. The richly emotive language of Spanish had many different words for love, and the ones he had chosen were generally reserved for lovers, for passionate moments that a girl Raquel's age could not yet really comprehend.
"I love you, my lover," was the feel of his words.
But it wasn't love. He was different now, and from that day forth Raquel noticed him more and more, standing in her doorway, watching her play. His kisses were more frequent, his touches more hesitant and yet somehow more intrusive. The pattern continued until she was eight, and at last he came to her room on a night no one else was home. He came to her, and held her, and then hurt her in a way she had never dreamed possible, proclaiming his love all the while, and then telling her that if she told anyone of what had happened, she would burn forever en el infierno, in hell, and her parents and she would be sent back to Mexico, and Jorge sold as a slave to rich Americans.
She told no one. Her father died when she was ten, and she told no one. She turned twelve, and took Holy Communion at the church, and felt the burning shame of impurity before God, but told no one. Finally, when she was sixteen, and had been raped and molested repeatedly for almost a decade, Miguel was killed with her mother in a car crash. She wept, for her mother was gone, but she also laughed on the night of the funeral, for she could sleep at last without fear that he would come to her bed before the night was over.
Soon after that, she petitioned for adult status, got Jorge put under her legal guardianship, and used the money she received as a beneficiary under Miguel's life insurance policy to move them as far as she could from the house that she had suffered in for most of her life. She moved to Montana, for no other reason than that it was far away from Los Angeles. She no longer believed in angels, and so could not live in a city named for them.
She came with Jorge, who went through high school and college and eventually got a job working as a security guard at the Crane Institute, a prison for crazies thirty miles away from the small town of Stonetree, where she lived. She changed her name to Rachel, and vowed she would have a new life, a good life.
She met Tommy, who could wrap his hand around her neck and make her feel safe. She married him, because he was good and kind, and promised to love her forever.
And then one day she came home and found that he had lost his job. He was drunk, and swaying, and his breath stank, and his hands were sweaty as he clumsily tried to take off her clothes, and when she resisted, he hit her.
Both of them were surprised, and his eyes filled with tears. He sank to his knees and begged her forgiveness and promised it would never happen again. But it did. More and more often, and now she looked up at him, looming over her as she lay on the bed, and wondered if this would be the time that he finally killed her.
One of his fingers, short and thick, powerful appendages that were as heavy and hard as hammerheads, pointed at her. He weaved a bit as he prepared to speak, and when he did, it was in that slurred voice that she now knew so well.
"You never, ever touch my wallet," he said. His eyes shone dully, like lights covered in Vaseline.
"I'm sorry," Rachel whispered. "So sorry, I didn't mean anything. Just the landlord came and you were asleep and I didn't have the mon -"
Tommy lifted his hand. Rachel cringed as best she could, a small cry escaping her lips. She wanted to stand up to him, to fight back. But every time she tried, she thought she could hear her uncle, standing behind her, whispering, "Te quiero, te amo," and her knees would go weak. She was powerless against men like this, men who would hurt you for their pleasure, who would use you and throw you away at a whim. And so sh
e was powerless against all men. She hated it, but all she could do was cry.
"Shut up," said Tommy. His voice was thick, he was even more drunk than usual, it seemed. Rachel closed her eyes, and would have prayed if she thought it would do any good. But the saints and the virgin were long dead, and God no longer listened to prayers, if ever he had. So instead she tried to think of nothing, of a darkness so perfect and absolute that she could hide in it and never be found.
"What're you lookin' at?" said Tommy.
That made no sense to Rachel, but then she realized who Tommy was talking to. Her eyes snapped open, no longer merely frightened now but panicked as she realized that Becky was watching them from the doorway.
Her daughter was dark of hair and skin, like her mother. She was strong and beautiful, too, with eyes so large and luminous that they engendered instant affection in nearly everyone who met her. She was only eight years old, but her eyes were wise.
Now, however, Rachel could see that her daughter's lovely eyes were clouded with fear as she watched Tommy beating her: as she watched her father hurting her mother.
"You hear me?" said Tommy, his voice growing in volume and raising in pitch. His drunken anger was quickly becoming rage. "What are you lookin' at?"
Becky did not answer, but instead ran out of the room, no doubt trying to get away from the nightmare that she lived in daily.
Just like me, thought Rachel. Becky is just like her mother, living in hell with no one to protect her.
She looked back at Tommy. His nostrils were flaring and his hands tightened into thick fists. He stepped away from Rachel, swiveling to face the doorway their daughter had run through.
"Wh . . . what are you doing?" asked Rachel.
Tommy glanced back at her. He smiled at her, and the smile was almost tender. That frightened Rachel more than anything: he was growing so cruel that he no longer felt guilt at his abuses, merely pleasure and satisfaction.
"Shut your face, woman," he said dreamily. He swayed again, then took a step toward the door.
"Where are you going?" she said.
Tommy continued smiling as he turned back to her. He flipped her over, and she felt his belt smash against her back. She cried out, bit her lip to keep from screaming, and felt blood run across her tongue.
Three hard whips with his belt, and she felt skin ripping off her back. She cried, and the salt of her tears mingled with the salty blood on her lip.
"When I tell you to shut your face, you do it," he said.
She rolled over agonizingly, turning back to face him, her fear at what would come next overcoming the terror she felt at seeing his face. She did not speak, but he chose to answer her earlier question.
"Where am I going?" he said. His smile grew even wider, his eyes grew dreamy, (and she could hear Miguel in her mind, saying, "Te amo") as Tommy said, "I'm going to teach our daughter a lesson in manners."
HEATER
Paul walked down the stairs, clanking heavily on the metal plates beneath his feet, and entered the basement. He had taken no particular pains to mask his entry, walking heavily the entire way, but in spite of his lack of stealth, the basement's two other occupants were apparently unaware of him.
Vincent Marcuzzi was laying on the floor, the upper half of his body inside the ventilation shaft that opened into the basement at floor level. Donald Hicks stood nearby, his back to the other guard, tightening a gauge on the huge gas heater that took up nearly one quarter of the basement space.
Before Paul could speak and announce his presence to the two men, Vincent's voice, high and whining, emerged from the shaft where he had ensconced himself. "Mr. Smartypants should try working for a change. That'd warm Wiseman up without us having to be stuck in this hole."
Without turning around, Donald mumbled, "He's working, Vince."
"Right. One day, Don, Mr. Ph.D. is gonna need us for something more important than fixing the heater. And on that day I'm gonna enjoy laughing in his face and then walking out on him."
There was a moment of silence, and then Paul heard a high-pitched shriek and Vincent threw himself backward out of the vent shaft, flopping like a trout on the concrete floor. His contortions would have been funny had not they been so obviously the product of terror. Even so, his coworker obviously found them hysterical, for Donald doubled over in silent laughter.
Donald was a short man, this around the middle, seeming almost as wide as he was tall, with a black mustache that didn't match the auburn tones of his hair. Paul remembered asking him about it once, inquiring whether it was dyed that color. Donald had laughed and said slowly, "My gramps was Irish, go figure," leaving Paul without a solid answer.
That was not an atypical response for Donald, as Paul came to learn. If two words could describe Donald, they would be round and slow. Round of body, slow to speak. Donald spoke so slowly and so little, in fact, that Paul had thought for a time that Donald had a developmental disability, finally dismissing the theory for the simple reason that no one with such a challenge could have remained as long at The Loon as Donald – over a decade; only Hip-Hop and Dr. Crane had been here longer – and survived. Finally, only last year, Paul had discovered something that explained three things about Donald: his almost painfully retiring manner, his slow speech, and his thick black mustache.
While doing a routine check on some old paperwork, Paul had discovered that Donald had been born with both a cleft lip and a cleft palate. Either defect alone was not medically strange: just around one in seven hundred people had some degree of cleft lip or cleft palate. But the degree to which the roof of Donald's mouth had been unfinished and deformed had been unusually severe. Whereas most people with the condition had a slight notch in their lips, or the roofs of their mouths had a small gap, Donald had been born with a lip that was split in completely in half, only coming together at his nose. The soft roof of his mouth had also had a fissure that ran its length, a potentially dangerous physical condition that often led to death in less-developed countries.
According to the medical papers that were a part of his personnel file, Donald had had to undergo over a dozen major and minor surgeries: sewing the lips and mouth together properly, skin grafts, even a rhinoplasty to repair the parts of Donald's nose that were affected by the condition. As a result, Donald had not spoken at all until he was six, and only after a decade of speech therapy had he managed to speak well.
With a condition such as his, one that was visible, audible, and – to many people – highly disturbing, Paul imagined that Donald had likely been the brunt of many unkind words at school and perhaps even in his home. Small surprise, then, that he had grown a mustache to cover the scars, and that he was still reticent to speak.
At least Donald would speak to him, however. Not so Vincent, who obviously resented Paul for reasons he had never been able to discern. Vincent was in his late twenties, a clean-cut Italian who tried to exude Mob-boss toughness. However, that tough projection ultimately petered out into the false bravado of a coward. Paul didn't like Vincent, and the feeling was mutual. In spades.
Now, however, Vincent's wrath was not focused on Paul, but on Donald, who still laughed his near-silent laugh as Vincent got to his feet and dusted off his uniform.
"Shut up," hissed Vincent. He beat at his trousers, sending clouds of dust into the air. The dust motes hung suspended in the dim light of the basement, then slowly floated downward to the floor. "Goddam rats hibernating in the vents. Scared shit out of me."
Donald slowly stopped laughing, and said the longest sentence Paul had ever heard him utter: "Can't blame 'em, Vince: the air shafts are the warmest place around."
Donald turned back to the heater, chuckling again as he put the wrench back to the valve he had been working on before Vincent began his frantic wormcrawl across the floor. Paul, still unobserved by the two men, saw Vincent open his mouth – no doubt to say something singularly nasty. But instead of speaking, he shocked Paul by screaming semi-hysterically and launching himself phys
ically at Donald. Vincent body-checked the older man, and the two went down in a thrashing pile.
Paul felt himself travel the distance between the two men in an instant. He had semi-consciously expected Vincent to snap at some point, but had not expected that he would choose Donald – the only person who seemed to genuinely like the Mafia wannabe – as his object of attack when it happened.
Paul reached down and yanked Vincent upward by the collar of his jacket. He expected to get dragged down into the fight, but Vincent came up without resistance, surprisingly light under Paul's pull.
"Shitforbrains!" yelled Vincent.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Donald was mumbling, still laying on the ground with a stunned look on his face.
"Hey!" shouted Paul. Vincent didn't seem to hear him.
"Stupid sonofa –" said Vincent.
"HEY!" Paul cut him off with what was almost a shriek. He felt himself grow enraged. In the back of his mind he knew that thinking about Donald as a child had made him think of Sammy again, of his own son who would have been strong and bright and good and who would never have made fun of a child like Donald. In the back of his mind he knew that he was not nearly as angry at Vincent as he was at the universe; at God. But he couldn't grab God, couldn't pull God up by His shirt collar and throttle Him a bit, couldn't shout at His face and see shock in His eyes.
He could do those things to Vincent though.
"What the hell are you doing, Marcuzzi?" Paul hollered, quietly reveling at the hint of fear he saw in the man's eyes. Paul normally didn't even raise his voice, let alone scream like this. It had to be a surprise to Vincent Marcuzzi that there was someone else at The Loon who could match his vocal ferocity. "You want me to kick your ass out into the snow?"
Vincent blinked, and Paul thought he looked unsure: as though he couldn't comprehend why Paul could possibly be yelling at him.
Just like any other bully, thought Paul. The universe revolves around you, Vincent, doesn't it? At least in your head.
The Loon Page 3