At school that week, some of Monica’s friends had expressed shock that Monica’s parents didn’t employ armed bodyguards like all of the other affluent families. “Your mother es una loca,” someone had said in the Spanglish that was the official language of the American School. “She’s going to get secuestrada by guerrilleros.’” It had become fashionable among teenagers at the American School to brag that their parents were rich enough to be worth kidnapping. “I’d be embarrassed if I were you,’ a classmate advised Monica. “I’d worry people might think we couldn’t afford bodyguards.’
If they only knew that Mami and I once gutted fish for one hundred guerrilleros, Monica thought.
The answer to the family troubles came to her from the back of the box of Cap’n Crunch cereal, with its offer of temporary tattoos with three proofs of purchase. It was the cereal her grandmother Winters always got for her when she visited her home in Connecticut. Grandmother Winters had two extra bed rooms, a perfect place to start a new life. Monica decided right then and there that they had to get out of El Salvador. It was time to flee.
Monica went back into her father’s study and approached his desk just as he pulled a page out of the typewriter. “There,” he said. “I have to run to the office to wire this. You want to go for a ride?”
They got into his red Toyota pickup. He drew the lap belt over her legs and snapped it in place. When they pulled out of the driveway, with him still jabbering about the massacre, Monica interrupted him and said, “Dad, we have to move to Connecticut.”
The somberness of her voice made him take his eyes off the road. He shifted gears, drove slower down the steep hills of the Escalón neighborhood. “What’s going on?” he said, glancing briefly at the road, then back at his daughter, a look of deep concern already visible on his face. Monica was silent as she fought the grip that was taking hold at the back of her throat.
He said, “Is it something going on at school?”
She shook her head.
“A boy?” he said almost hopefully. Again she shook her head.
“I don’t want you and Mom to get a divorce, and I’m afraid something bad might happen to Mom,” she blurted.
“Did your mom say she wants to divorce me?”
“No,” she said, pulling at the threads on her skirt.
“Then don’t worry about it. Your mom and I are fine.”
“No, you aren’t,” she said, staring out the window as they passed block upon block of homes hidden behind twelve-foot brick walls topped with garlands of electrified razor wire, some of them with armed guards standing out front. Others were protected more subtly, from castlelike turrets hidden among the leaves of almond trees overlooking the street.
Then it came, like hot vomit erupting from some secret, contained place inside her: “Mom is with Maximiliano, Dad. Mom is with Maximiliano,” she repeated, hoping he understood.
Bruce exhaled loudly, beeped his horn at somebody, and stepped on the gas. They approached the edge of the property of a mysterious, overgrown mansion of crazy construction—an Italian Renaissance palazzo from the north face, a red-and-white Chinese palace on the south. Bruce pulled the truck into a strip of driveway just before the mansion’s grand gates. He turned off the engine. The sun dropped through the windshield with the oppressive weight of a wool blanket. A skinny, black dog appeared and sat beside Bruce’s door, sniffing at the air.
“Are you sure about what you’re saying, Monica?” He sounded angry.
Monica looked down at her sandals. She began to cry, now that she had spoken of it. She looked up at her father. “They take me on trips with them,” she said, covering her face with her hands, hoping he wouldn’t need for her to go into detail. After a while, she turned to look at him.
He was staring straight ahead, and for a moment Monica wondered if he had even heard her. He bit down on his lip, hard. Sweat beaded up among the blond hairs on his forearm. The tip of his nose reddened and his eyes became glassy. If there were any tears, he managed to blink them away. “God” is all he said. Outside, the skinny, black dog began to scratch at his door, then came around and started whining and scratching on Monica’s side.
“We have to get out of here, Dad. Max’s wife is following Mom and me around.” Monica felt a wave rise deep in her entrails. She opened the door of the truck, leaned out, and threw up a yellow pool of liquefied Cap’n Crunch cereal. Almost immediately, the dog leaped forward and happily lapped it up.
* * *
“MY FATHER DELIVERED his news story, and then took me home,” Monica told Will. “He locked himself in his room for a few hours while I just freaked out. I thought he was mad at me. When he came out, he was drunk. It was the one and only time in my childhood I saw him like that. He was finally able to hug me and tell me that I had done the right thing. I made him promise he wouldn’t tell a soul about my confession.”
“The part I don’t understand,” Will said, “is what your mother saw in the communists.” He bent down to pet a mangy, skinny, black dog that had wandered into the store and looked at them with hungry, haunted eyes.
“Be careful with that dog,” Monica said. “I’m sure that he hasn’t been immunized.” She continued, “Max was the son of our family nanny, Francisca, who cared for both my mother and me as children. Mami and Max had crushes on each other during their entire childhood, but of course, a courtship was strictly forbidden. Eventually, it became an unfulfilled Romeo and Juliet thing. By the time my mother felt strong enough to defy our family’s social code, she was already married to my father, and Maximiliano was adjuntado to someone in a common-law marriage. Obviously, he never spoke of her, and I only caught a quick glimpse of her once, in a supermarket. My mom called her ‘the witch.’ I was afraid of her, but I felt sorry for her too.”
“I wonder,” Will said, “if they had just left them alone if they wouldn’t have eventually grown apart and lost interest in each other, especially being from different worlds. It’s the lure of forbidden fruit. … And how did the pauper of our story get to be a medical doctor?”
Monica shrugged. “First of all, he went to some semi-accredited program in El Salvador, which issues medical degrees in less time than it takes to get a bachelor’s degree in the States. My grandfather paid for it—less an altruistic gesture than a move to gain power and influence over Max. He must have had a sense that Max already had my mother hooked, and Abuelo wanted to put an end to it. Although the degree couldn’t buy him a fancy practice in San Salvador, it allowed him to hang a shingle outside his door, write prescriptions, and practice general medicine as a humble country doctor. Eventually, he dedicated his medical training almost exclusively to aiding the revolutionaries. Not exactly what my grandfather had in mind.”
”Ya vamos a cerrar, señorita,” the shopkeeper warned. Monica negotiated another fifteen minutes, so she could finish the story.
“Anyway, after my confession, my mother called to tell me that the Conus she had gone to see was probably not a furiosus, but that she thought it was worth examining. She had placed it in a dishpan of seawater and had intended to take it back to the university lab. She was unsure when that might be because Max had asked for her help with some campesinos who needed medical attention. They were headed for El Trovador, a coastal farm not far from Negrarena. She asked me to cover for her by telling my father that she had gone to Guatemala for a few days. I told him the truth instead. Eventually, our anger was replaced by worry.”
“Was your grandmother alive?”
“Yeah. But I begged my dad not to tell her what was going on. I wanted to keep it between us, because I feared an over-the-top reaction from Abuela.”
Will reached across the table and took her hand, squeezed it. “I’m so sorry all this happened.”
Monica nodded and gently pulled her hand away.
Will looked down, crushed the butt of his cigar into a plastic ashtray on the table.
“Finish your story,” he said, glancing up at a clock on the wall.
“She’s going to kick us out in five.”
“There’s not that much more to tell. I got to stay home from school for weeks on end. I stayed with my grandmother at the beach house. I guess we were both in a sort of personal seclusion, trying to deal with what was happening. She was always surrounded by people, always so formidable, so in control. But in the weeks after my mom went missing, Abuela doped herself up with tranquilizers and slept most of the day. Eventually, my dad told me that I should prepare myself for the probability that my mother might never come back. She didn’t. A witness said they saw her thrashing far out, and so all we could conclude is that she drowned. By fall I was enrolled in junior high in Connecticut.”
“What about Grandma Borrero?”
“Abuela? She came to visit us in Connecticut a few times, but my dad didn’t want us to return to El Salvador. She died eight years ago.”
“And so who got all your family’s money?” Will asked.
Monica made a face at him and, looking around, said, “Shh. Remember where you are.”
Will clamped a hand over his mouth. Monica lowered her voice too. “The short answer is Jorge, who is my great-uncle. Jorge was the only living Borrero brother by then. In her last will and testament, my grandmother left everything to my mother, assuming that my mother would eventually pass it down to me. Seven years after her disappearance, Tío Jorge had my mother legally declared dead. By then my grandmother had developed Alzheimer’s disease and was unable to make any adjustments to her will. Somehow, Tío Jorge got every last penny.”
Will said, “It sounds like your grandmother didn’t really believe your mother was dead or she would have revised the will to include you.”
Monica slapped the tabletop with one hand. “That’s what everyone said, that she was in denial.” She paused, looking off into the distance. “But I saw her mourning. It was no show.”
“She may have mourned the death of the relationship rather than the person.”
“My dad’s theory is that as the executor of Abuela’s estate, Jorge was able to manipulate the legal process in his favor.” Her eyes drifted up to the wall clock. “That’s my story and our time is up.” She stood, and Will paid the woman. They stepped out into the dimly lit street and headed back to the guesthouse.
In the street, they kept an eye out for danger, and Monica asked that they walk on the side of the street that was most illuminated. Will slipped his hands into his pockets, then brought his feet together and stopped.
“What?”
He looked around, crossed his arms in front of him, and stared down at the packed-dirt road. “Hmmm.”
She waited, and he shifted his position, tugging at his lower lip, before he turned to her and said, “Have you ever wondered if … your dad …” He let the sentence trail off.
Monica tilted her head. “If my dad reported Max’s whereabouts to the militares in a jealous fit?”
Will shrugged. “Did it ever cross your mind?”
“Of course it did, years later. But I honestly don’t think he did. He loved my mother, and he knew that it was dangerous for her to be near Max. I know in my heart that he would never send harm her way, he just wouldn’t.”
As she finished speaking, she felt a pair of eyes boring into her back. Her heart skipped a beat and she jumped back when she saw the black figure that was shadowing them, eyes shining in the pale light of the moon.
A second later, she laughed and put her hand over her heart when she saw that it was the dog from the restaurant. “Oh, that’s bad luck.”
“What’s bad luck?” Will said, just as he saw the same shadow and jumped and put his arms protectively around her shoulder.
“El Cadejo is following us.”
“You know this dog?”
“No, it’s a local legend. If a small black dog follows you, it just might be the dreaded Cadejo. He’s part of a collection of local folklore—there’s a crazy woman named La Siguanaba who kills men near rivers, and she has a son who’s a Freddy Krueger type.” Monica looked up at the barrel-tile roofs of the small buildings, at the chipped plaster exposing brown adobe bricks beneath. She scratched her head, trying to remember. “There’s also a phantom wagon, just like the rickshaw in that Kipling story. El Cadejo announces tragedy—or delivers it, I can’t remember which.”
Will took a step toward the dog. “Shoo! Go home, mutt.”
“Shoo?” Monica said, rolling her eyes. “He doesn’t know shoo, Will. He doesn’t speak English.”
Will tried kicking one foot in the air, and the dog bowed his head but didn’t budge. “How do you shoo a dog in Spanish, then?”
Monica picked up a pebble, held it up to the light. “You throw a small rock at him, then you say shit without the i. Like this: Shhht.” She stomped her foot and tossed the rock at the dog, which he caught in his mouth, sampled, then let drop on the sidewalk.
Will punched his fist through the air. “Wow, you really showed him.”
”Chuchos are tough. They’re not scared of anything but hunger.” She put her hands on her hips. “If this dog is the legendary Cadejo, he has demonic powers. He might beat us home by crawling up the front of that building and appearing on the other side, just like a lizard.”
Will went through his pockets. “I wish I had something to give him, I feel sorry for him.”
They hurried through the darkened streets, and when they passed through the entrance of the inn, Will grabbed Monica’s shoulder, turned her around, and said, “Hey.”
Monica felt a sudden panic that he might kiss her, just by the way he said “Hey.” She stared down at his rubber sandals, tilted her head, pushing an ear toward him with her face still turned away. “Hmm?”
“I hope you weren’t offended by what I suggested about your dad. … I was playing at being an amateur detective, but I feel badly about saying it. This is your life, for God’s sake, not a whodunit novel. It was a stupid thing to say, and I apologize.”
Monica looked up and smiled, relieved. “I told you, I’d thought of that possibility myself. It didn’t happen that way, I’m sure of that. But it’s a perfectly logical conclusion.”
The innkeeper was awake and nervous and fussed at them like a mother for being out so late despite her warning. Monica thanked her for her concern and wished her a good night. Monica stepped toward Will and gave him what was supposed to be a quick hug and said, “Night.” But he kept her locked in and pulled her closer to him, one arm around the small of her waist, the other around her shoulders.
“I’m glad you told me that story,” he said. “I feel like I’ve known you for a long time.”
And when he let her go, the look on his face was open and flushed and serious and made Monica dizzy. How easy it would be to bring her face a little closer to his. Just an inch or two closer and they could change the course of their budding friendship forever. It was the longest journey a chin could ever make. What unknowable danger might lurk if she were to let herself look up at him with eyes that howled the truth about her full-moon crush?
“Next time,” she said, pointing a finger into the center of his chest, “it’ll be your turn. We’ll get cigars and you can tell me a long story about your life with Yvette.”
As a cold shower, it worked. He stepped back, nodded his head, smiled briefly. “Good night, Monica Winters Borrero,” he said. “See you in the morning.”
Monica turned and walked down the hall toward her room. She could feel his gaze descending her dorsal side like fingers reading the braille of her backbone. She heard his fading footsteps as he disappeared down another hallway.
In her room, she went to the window. She cranked the metal handle that opened the glass jalousies. Outside, the same black dog from the store was watching her from the street, its tongue hanging out, its eerie eyes shiny and flat as metal coins. He gave Monica the creeps, so she pulled the curtains closed, not wanting to think more about the mythical Cadejo, precursor to misfortune.
chapter 12 THE CHANNEL
Yvette Lucero remembered being on a sailboat that was motoring out of a channel. It was an overcast day, a bit chilly. Red and white buoys dotted the gray water. A large sign stated there was to be NO WAKE. She read the sign out loud, several times, and wondered if this meant that she should abandon hope. Still, it was a channel, and that in itself invited possibilities.
Her husband was standing at the helm, tan and handsome. He blew her a kiss and the sunlight caught on the gold band around his finger. An orange dog was moving excitedly about the deck. Yvette shivered in the damp air, looked down at her arms, and saw they were covered in gooseflesh. She rubbed herself once and got up and moved across the boat, stepped onto the ladder, and went down to look for a sweatshirt, scratching some bug bites on the backs of her legs. Her mother was sitting in the galley. She looked up and tried to hide something but it was too late, Yvette had already glimpsed a section of knitted pale green and yellow yarn in her lap. Her mother was knitting a baby blanket. Yvette wagged a finger at her and her mother smiled guiltily and pretended to be interested in the newspaper that was lying on the table. “You promised no baby pressure, remember?”
Yvette felt kinship without emotion for these two people, something like the pleasant but detached curiosity one might feel upon viewing old films of long-dead relatives whom you never met. The thrill was in discovering that a fresh strip of visual footage had been added to the meager inventory, a brand-new, never-been-seen episode appearing upon a screen that had been in a numbing and continuous loop for as long as she could remember.
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