MALA SORPRESA
tombilena came to work at the Mary Mother of God Rape Crisis Center and found the following item, clipped from that morning’s newspaper, tacked to the central bulletin board:
FISHERMEN CHARGED
IN RAPE CASE
new orleans, june 21 (sns)—Six men were taken into custody late Saturday night in Delacroix by Louisiana State Police and charged with aggravated battery, false imprisonment, assault with a deadly weapon, and rape with a foreign object.
The men, all of whom are fishermen and residents of the largely Isleño community of Delacroix Island, were arrested in Tommy’s Bar following a complaint lodged earlier in the evening by a woman whose name is being withheld.
According to the complaint, it is alleged that each of the men took turns torturing and sexually assaulting the woman with pool cues while the others observed. Each of the alleged perpetrators has denied the charges.
Currently being held in the St Bernard Parish jail pending ball hearings are: Poco Herida, 26; Naufragio Yema, 18; Campo Gayoso, 24; Valer La Pena, 22; Gallo Viudo, 46; and Sapo Feo, 28.
Reading her brother’s name made Tombilena’s stomach turn. She felt faint, which she never had before, and quickly sat down in one of the lemon yellow plastic chairs in the waiting room, directly in front of the bulletin board. Marble Lesson entered from the inner office and sat down next to her. She took Tombilena’s left hand, the one closest to her, in both of her own.
‘We got to talk,’ said Marble.
MARBLE LAYS IT ON THE TABLE
after tombilena had finished speaking on the telephone to her father, Rodrigue, and learned that Campo’s bail had been set at fifty thousand dollars, as it had for each of the accused, and that Rodrigue was about to put up the Gayoso house as collateral, she walked with Marble Lesson over to Tallulah’s, a café on Religious. Tombilena was still stunned by the news of her brother’s alleged involvement in the assault, and she hardly noticed when a waitress brought to their table the cups of coffee Marble had ordered for them.
‘Your brother been known to be knockin’ females around?’ Marble asked, as she stirred a spoonful of brown sugar into her own cup.
Marble was short, about five foot one, with straight, sandy brown hair chopped off under the ears and bangs below her eyebrows. She wore schoolboy glasses that made her greenish blue eyes look even tinier than they were. Her lips were light pink, the same color as her cheeks. Tombilena looked at Marble bringing the cup to her mouth and was startled by how small the girl’s fingers were. The sight reminded her of an old movie she and Pace had watched once on TV, The Incredible Shrinking Man; the scene where the guy who’s fading away due to an undetermined malady is drinking coffee with a lady midget and they’re both holding enormous saucers and bowl-like cups in their child-sized hands. It is shortly thereafter that the man, who has come to believe that the shrinking process has ceased, realizes to his horror that it’s started again; suddenly, he’s smaller than the lady midget. At this moment, Tombilena felt tiny, tinier than she had ever felt before in her adult life.
‘I guess I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘Campo’s five years younger’n me, and I ain’t closely kept up on his activities these last few years. I was livin’ here in N.O. before I got married, then me and Pace, my husband who’s now deceased, was mostly concerned with each other. Bein’ back in Delacroix, of course, I seen a lot of Campo, but I never heard about nothin’ extra strange in his behavior.’
Marble took out a pack of Delicado cigarettes and stuck one in her mouth.
‘Mind if I smoke?’ she asked, then before Tombilena could answer, lit it with an inch-and-a-half flame from a freshly polished Zippo that had two Oriental characters engraved on one side.
‘What’re them scratchin’s on your lighter?’
Marble exhaled a bluish stream of Mexican smoke, looked quickly at her fire source, smiled, and dropped it back into the left breast pocket of her red sateen cowboy shirt. Because her breasts were so small, Marble never wore a brassiere, and she liked to feel the cool, smooth weight of the silver lighter against her body.
‘Name of a Japanese girl, Take Ahike. She sent it to me from Japan. Writin’s called kanji, she told me. Chinese, but the Japanese use it. She come to Mary Mother of God with her problem. Man much older’n her—Take was eighteen at the time—he maybe been forty or so, was her cousin, kept her prisoner in his house over in Gentilly Terrace. Love slave stuff. She come to New Orleans to attend the Pillara Salt Memorial Bible College, and her folks back in Osaka had thought they were doin’ right arrangin’ for her to board with their relative. Man owned a porcelain repair shop on Melpomene and South Tonti.’
‘He got her pregnant, I guess.’
‘Never even enrolled her at the college. Kept her locked in a soundproof bedroom for fourteen months. Made her write letters home sayin’ how good she was doin’ at school and how gracious a host their cousin was.’
‘How’d she escape?’
‘Stabbed him through the right eye with a chopstick one night when he brought her supper. Man would watch her eat, then, before she could finish, Take said, he’d rape her. Seems her chewin’ excited him so much he couldn’t wait. Take told us he was like a rabbit, on and off real quick, but he done it to her six, seven times a day, sometimes more, every day, even durin’ her period, for fourteen months. She said she woke up the middle of her first night in this country with his dick in her mouth.’
‘Did she kill him?’
Marble puffed a few times, then stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray.
‘No. Blinded him in the one eye, then run out with hardly no clothes on and no money, of course. Didn’t know where she was. Happened Helga Grandeza was drivin’ by at just that moment—she lives in that neighborhood—and Helga stopped and picked Take up, brought her directly to Mary Mother of God. We took care of everything, then she went back to Japan.’
‘Her parents know about what happened? The abortion?’
‘Doubt it. Take said her folks’d freak if they did, prob’ly all commit seppuku ’cause of the humiliation.’
‘They could’ve revenged theirselves.’
‘Die Brausenkriegers took care of that. We waited till after Take had gone home. Her cousin never even tried to find her, far as we know. We told Take to tell her folks that he’d had a heart attack and died.’
‘What really happened?’
‘Night she left, we paid the man a visit. Tied him down to the bed he’d abused her on and invaded the orifices of his person repeatedly with a variety of power tools. Then, before Take Ahike coulda said sayonara, we served him his last meal. One natural guess’ll get it.’
‘Penis sushi.’
Marble grinned. ‘You got a future with this company, Ms Gayoso, but first we gotta agree on the deal involves your brother.’
‘Marble, before Die Brausenkriegers go into action, let me talk to Campo, see in fact he participated.’
‘Observin’s same as doin’ if he done nothin’ try to stop it.’
‘I’ll get the details. Campo won’t lie to me.’
‘All right, Tombilena. They ain’t no way these boys is escapin’ our attention.’
‘What about the woman? You know who she is?’
‘Victoria China Realito, forty-five, from Port Arthur, Texas. She was in New Orleans settlin’ the estate of her brother, a pawnshop operator, who was murdered a while back. She met this one of ’em, Gallo Viudo, in Phil’s Lounge on St Roch, then accompanied him to Delacroix. That’s all we know right now. Ms Realito is under heavy sedation at the Hôtel Dieu. Madonna Kim and Junebug are over there, waitin’ on her to counsel.’
Tombilena’s eyes suddenly watered up, and she said, ‘Marble, I know you’re a lot younger than me, but somehow it seems you’re way older. This world’s so terrible, but it appears you got better’n a hog grip on things.’
Marble reached across the table and clasped Tombilena’s trembling hands with her own.
&
nbsp; ‘As Jeremiah said, when he was in the juzgado: “The Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail: they shall be greatly ashamed; for they shall not prosper: their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten. But, O Lord of hosts, that triest the righteous, and seest the reins of the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them: for unto thee have I opened my cause.” There’s comfort there.’
‘Oh, Marble, dear Marble, it’s so hard not to suffer.’
‘I know it, Tombilena. One of the reasons I’m on the planet, help spread the sufferin’ around more evenly.’
SCREEN TEST
tombilena followed the guard into an eight-by-twelve-foot room. The floor was covered with dirty gray linoleum; the cement block walls had been painted pale blue. There was no furniture in the room. The guard told Tombilena to stand directly in front of an eight-foot-high gray metal door with a narrow window cut into it sixty-six to seventy-six inches from the floor. A thick green mesh screen was stapled across the window.
‘Wet rat they,’ said the guard, an obese, clay-skinned man Tombilena guessed to be in his early thirties. Headed for an early death by heart attack, she thought.
The guard wore a yellow inchworm mustache that he constantly petted, as if it were a dozing house cat. Tombilena averted her gaze from him and stared into the green mesh.
‘When da priznap, tawk direck dat winda.’
Tombilena wiped the palms of her hands down the sides of her dress. A shadow appeared on the other side of the screen.
‘Hello, Sis,’ said Campo.
Tombilena meant to talk but instead she burst into tears.
‘C’mon, Tommy, it ain’t so tough. Daddy havin’ me outta here by tomorra noon, latest.’
‘I can barely see you,’ she said.
Campo laughed. ‘I ain’t got no prettier, lately, so you not missin’ nothin’ new.’
‘Campo, you’re my brother, and I love you. You know that, right?’
‘Sure, Sis, of course. I love you, too.’
‘I just need to know you did this thing.’
‘Aw, Tommy, we can’t talk here. Wait Daddy gets me home, I’ll tell ya what happen.’
Tombilena tried harder to discern the contours of Campo’s face, but it was impossible. She wanted to look into his eyes.
‘Babe, tell me straight you was or was not involve direckly.’
Campo’s head swiveled from right to left to right and down. He rested his stubbled chin on his chest
‘It weren’t simple, Tommy. All I can say now is, it weren’t simple.’
‘Tom’s up, missy,’ said the guard.
Campo raised his head and pressed his nose against the screen.
‘Be out tomorra, Tommy,’ he said. ‘Come by Daddy’s.’
Before Tombilena could reply, Campo was gone. The fat guard opened the outside door and she passed through it without looking at him.
As the elevator conveying Tombilena descended, she suddenly pictured Campo as he was at six years old, sitting in the late-morning sun on the edge of a dock at Delacroix, his skinny little boy’s legs dangling above the water. Stretched across his lap was a dead snake, a thick, black cottonmouth, three feet long. Campo was sawing away at it with a rusty pocketknife, sweating in silence as he attempted to sever the vampirish, venom-filled head. The eleven-year-old Tombilena had stood near her brother and witnessed his fierce concentration. Campo’s eyes were hidden, as if they had retracted into secret compartments in his face. He did not look up while his sister was there. The boy worked feverishly, the blood and viscera of the viper spewing forth, spotting and dripping from Campo’s forehead, cheeks, chest, and legs. Just as Tombilena’s memory bank called forth the cottonmouth’s head dropping onto the dock, its bleached fangs gleaming in the glare, the elevator door opened to the ground level of the building and she shuffled forward with the other passengers into the lobby.
Tombilena stood perfectly still for a full minute, sweating as Campo had that day on the dock, waiting for the ugly feeling that had overcome her to pass. It was almost as if the slightest motion on her part might trigger some sanguinary monster into sinking its poisonous teeth into the deepest part of her helpless brain.
WHEN LIFE IS LIKE A
CHEAP HOTEL ROOM
dear jesus,
Well this is sure it. This is letter number 666 that I have written to You over these past few years 666 is the devils number as You well know and I have dreaded coming to it but theres nothing to be done other than show him how his name and number mean nothing to a Believer on the Righteous side so consider this only another letter from me to You. We have a Situation here at Mary Mother of God. There is a problem that I thought it best to share with You before deciding on. One of the women who has come lately to work with us her name is Tombilena Gayoso she is an Isleño as is her brother who participated in an attack on a girl in Delacroix. This girl was raped by six men with poolsticks. A bunch of fishermen not unlike some of the ones You run with back in the days. The difficult part concerns this woman who is among our organization and her desire to spare her brother from the wrath of the Righteous she knows is coming to be visited upon each of these men done the devils work. There was lightning here today Jesus that struck close to the roof of our building out of an anvil-shaped cloud and continued to spark for twenty minutes or more. I was not frightened so much as surprised and impressed by the display of Your Daddys power. Watching the electric sky my mind kinda wandered back to when I was much younger and my Daddy was all the time drunk a time when he would fall in the road any old place even in the path of truck traffic and sleep. People would rescue him and he would not even know later what happened. He recovered and said he was so twisted up in his brain about the divorce from my mother Bird who lives now in Florida that he did not care what befell him. But the difficult decision here is should we let Tombilena deal with her brother herself. I am tempted to let her as a way of testing her commitment to our cause at Mary Mother of God. Die Brausenkriegers as I told you before are already set to take care of the other five in fact before there can be a trial. A good guess is they would leave the country on boats and never have a day in court. I saw on the TV news yesterday about a 6 year old girl who was stole out of her house in the middle of the night. They found the man who done it after he returned her to the home after molesting her in all kinds of ways and had shot the girl up with drugs and burned her body with cigarettes. This man had tattoos one of a lizard on an arm and a skull I think on the other that he cut off after she had told the police about them and this information was printed in the newspaper he must have read it. He had been kidnapping and having sex with girls down to the age of 9 months old Jesus I sometimes cannot even believe the sickness that is walking around loose out the door. If this is a test of us it is a severe one only You know why. I am thankful to be such a strong young person but I feel older than almost everybody aint that weird? My daddy Wes has fell off the wagon too which is the other terrible news. Last night I discovered him passed out from beer on the front porch so I pulled him inside the house where he woke up and said over and over Im not dyin in some cheap hotel room Im not dyin in some cheap hotel room. Jesus I hate to say this but life can get more awful the more a person sees of it.
Sincerely Your faithful
Marble
WOLVES OF THE EVENING
‘what do you think of this as an idea?’ said Madonna Kim Epps at the Tuesday evening executive session of Mary Mother of God. ‘You know how there’s becomin’ about every type program on cable TV these days? Like the Comedy Channel, Home Shoppin’ Channel, Cartoon Channel, and such. Well, I figure there oughta be the Execution Channel. For those states such as Utah, Texas, Florida, and us offers capital punishment, should be they’re televised to the nation. Let everybody see what it’s like.’
‘This is definitely one of your better notions, M.K.,’ said Saramel Meridian. ‘I mean that seriously. Even better would be to take those scu
mbuckets stole people’s life savin’s in the S and L scandal, and greedy stockbroker robbers, the white-collar criminals ripped off hundreds of millions from everyone, and hang ’em on public TV, let ’em twist till there ain’t nothin’ left but their viscera swayin’ in the wind. That way, folks could tune in anytime, day or night, for months, and see what becomes of them’s responsible for the starvation and deaths of thousands of poor and disabled people.’
‘I like it,’ Madonna Kim said, nodding enthusiastically. ‘In fact, we ought to consider expandin’ our activities to include men like you’re talkin’ about. Ones ought to be slaughtered ’stead of spendin’ a year or two in some minimum security country club and payin’ what to them’s a diddleyshit fine.’
‘What else gripes me,’ said Saramel, ‘is how they all of a sudden find religion, about which they’re sincere as hell, I’m certain.’
‘Cut this item from the Times-Picayune yesterday,’ Madonna Kim said as she removed a piece of paper from a pocket. ‘Which is what started me thinkin’ in this line. Obituary of Albert Pierrepoint, died at eighty-seven years old, in London.’
‘Who was he?’ asked Junebug Gilliam, putting a match to her Prince Edward stub.
‘Public executioner of England for the past twenty-five years. His father and uncle were hangmen, too. Says he sent four hundred thirty-three men and seventeen women to their eternal reward. In a school essay, written when he was twelve, Pierrepoint said, “I would like to be the public executioner as my dad is, because it needs a steady man who is good with his hands.”’
‘Hard to know if he was right thinkin’, though,’ said Saramel. ‘Prob’ly not.’
‘Article goes on to say he changed his mind on the deterrent factor of the death penalty after he retired. Course most do before kickin’ off. But this is the best part: “His past never played on his conscience,” said Patricia Wynne, owner of the nursin’ home where Albert Pierrepoint died. “He didn’t brood.”’
Southern Nights Page 18