The Heiress of Water: A Novel

by Sandra Rodriguez Barron

  For some reason she didn’t quite understand, Monica felt the need to look away.

  “Yvette had a friend who had almost died in childbirth, and so she was extremely intimidated by the whole idea.” Will hung his head for a moment. “I tell you, Monica—I wish we had had a child, because then I would have a part of her.” He didn’t look at her as he said it, but Monica could tell by his quick blinking that his eyes had become moist for a brief moment.

  “God, I’m sorry,” she mumbled. And she couldn’t think of another thing to say, so she waved to the shopkeeper. “Please. I need another beer.”

  AT MIDNIGHT, when the store closed, they were still talking. Monica had shared every last detail of the day: that Leticia knew who she was, her conversation with Paige, the specimen book, the hints of controversy surrounding conotoxin treatment that Paige had found, her confusion about Alma’s name being out there in the world. Monica told him that she had decided to visit with Francisca, the former Borrero nanny. Francisca, Maximiliano Campos’s mother, had been a kind and loving caretaker to both Monica and Alma for decades. Francisca was also Dr. Fernanda Mendez’s grandmother and might be able to provide information no one else would.

  Will said, “Yvette has testing tomorrow morning, and they want Sylvia and me out of the way. The Caracol drivers said they’d take me anywhere I want for a fee. Let’s sleep in tomorrow morning, then go to Borr-Lac around ten.”

  When the trip was settled, the questions outlined, the theories discussed, they sat in satisfied silence for a moment. Will looked out the door, toward the star-filled sky. He smiled. “She knows what she’s doing.”

  Monica looked at him, confused.

  “Yvette. She plotted out this whole thing, this convoluted road with its little trail of bread crumbs leading us to this remote, unlikely place,” he said, still looking out at the sky. He pointed up. “That’s where the real Yvette is, you know.”

  Monica looked up to where he was pointing, as if she might indeed see a young woman’s figure floating over the Salvadoran coastline.

  “There’s a reason for everything, Monica, and I have a feeling we’re about to find out why we’re here.” Then, he put down his beer and gave her a charged look, but unlike her earlier attempt, his was dead accurate in communicating meaning. She understood that what was happening under the surface was deeper than attraction, perhaps even beyond admiration.

  How had this happened? Who was supposed to watch the milk so it didn’t boil over? She thought she had been vigilant.

  Monica looked away and coolly said, “Kevin and I decided we’re going to host a party for you and Yvette.” She crushed a mosquito between her hands and smiled. “After Yvettte’s interview on Oprah.” Then, she pretended to yawn again, trying to be more convincing this time. She laced her fingers and stretched. “Time to go back. I’m tired.”

  On the way home, she told Will that she was grateful to have found a true friend in him. She made sure she repeated the word friend three times, and when they said good-night, she just waved.

  In her bed that night, exhausted beyond reason, Monica couldn’t sleep. On top of the maelstrom of emotions she was feeling at being “home,” there was Will, and their disturbing drift toward intimacy. That cold and unnerving wrist grip from Yvette had served as a stern reminder of exactly whom he still belonged to.

  chapter 14 MILK DUCTS

  Monica wanted to go to see Francisca Campos alone, but Will insisted she should have someone with her. Sylvia was idle that morning, and so Monica was worried that it would be rude and inappropriate to exclude her from any excursions. Will said it was not a problem; he had overheard someone talking about a religious festival going on in a nearby village, charmingly named El Delirio—the Spanish word for “euphoria.” Will had instructed Monica to invite Sylvia, but to be sure to mention that the streets of El Delirio were cobblestone. “She has bad knees,” he said. “She’d never go.”

  Feeling a bit sneaky yet excited about seeking out her old nanny, Monica had done as Will instructed. She described to Sylvia what one could typically expect from a Salvadoran village festival: “Folkloric dance, marimba music, sawdust art on the concrete of the central plaza, and the effigy of an unheard-of saint, usually made up with far too much rouge, paraded through the streets.”

  “You kids go,” Sylvia said, rubbing her knees. “And don’t forget to pray to the unheard-of saint for our Yvette.” She smiled sheepishly and held out her hands. “You never know”

  Monica felt a pang of guilt, but reminded herself that at the core of this trip was their intention to know more about the clinic and Yvette’s treatment.

  Bruce was working on his laptop in an empty office of the clinic, so Monica and Will slipped past the lobby and jumped into a van with a driver who would take them to the Borr-Lac plant and back for the equivalent of three dollars.

  AT THE LOBBY OF BORR-LAC, Monica asked to speak with Francisca Campos. A floor supervisor gave them hairnets to wear and walked them through the dairy plant that Monica’s great-grandfather and his two brothers had built in 1918.

  Monica laughed heartily at the sight of Will in a hairnet, which made his ears stick out.

  “It’s not your best look either, cafeteria lady.”

  The milk was transported in clear plastic tubing from vat to vat, great mammarian ducts that nourished the whole country. The smell of fresh cow milk—musky and thick—made tears spring up in Monica’s eyes. The scent took her back to a morning when Abuelo had taken her to watch the cows being milked, back before the fancy machines. She remembered the workers loading trucks with aluminum tanks that were still warm with the animals’ body heat. Now, everything had changed—the facility was modern and immaculate, even air-conditioned.

  “Francisca’s very old now,” the supervisor warned as Will and Monica followed her along a wall made of air-packed cheese bricks. “I normally don’t just let people in like this, but she has a hard time walking all this way. She’s such a relic that los jefes let her work here no matter what. She can’t produce much, because she has cataracts, but she doesn’t want to retire. Here she is. … Doña Francisca, you have visitors.”

  Francisca had shriveled into a raisin of an old lady. She had a sprout of gray hair growing on her chin. She pursed her lips as she searched their faces and began to struggle out of her chair. “Please stay seated,” Monica said, kneeling before her. “Do you remember me? I was a little girl when you took care of me.”

  Francisca moved her lips and mumbled. She shook her desiccated head no.

  “Soy Mónica. La hija de la Nina Alma.”

  Her eyes grew enormous. ”Dios mío,” she said, putting her hand on her heart “So it’s true that you’re back.”

  “You know these people?” the supervisor asked.

  ”Claro que sí,” Francisca answered, as if it were the stupidest question in the world. She smiled and put her arms out. ”Mi niña. I didn’t recognize you all grown up. Is this your husband? Que guapo.”

  They hugged, and Monica was horrified when Francisca kept referring to Will as her husband, despite both of them insisting that they were just ”amigos.” Even worse, she called everyone round and introduced Monica as the “rightful heiress” of Borr-Lac.

  Monica looked over at Will, who was quiet, but staying close, taking it all in. They met every last worker in soft cheeses and tried to explain where Connecticut was, which elicited blank looks until she told them that it was near ”Nuevajork.” Eventually, she asked to be left alone with Francisca. She hugged the old lady again and told her how much it meant to her to see her again. “You were like a mother to me,” Monica said, her voice full of emotion. “Now that my grandmother and mother are gone, and we don’t speak to the Borreros, you’re the only mother figure I have left. I’ve missed you.”

  The old lady pulled at Monica’s hands until Monica sat down next to her. She pressed her hands together and closed her eyes. Even though her words were mumbled, Monica could tell by their
rhythm that she was saying a Hail Mary. ”Virgen

  santa, purísima, ilumíname el camino? The old woman sat in silent prayer for some time, and not knowing what else to do, Monica scratched at a scab from a mosquito bite on the back of her elbow. Will wandered away for a sampling of freshly made sour cream.

  When Francisca opened her ancient eyes, she took Monica’s hand and said, “You want to know about your mama. That’s why you’re here.”

  Monica looked up to the ceiling, thinking, So there is a truth to be known. “Yes,” she whispered, then shouted it, because she knew the woman had not heard her. “Tell me.”

  Francisca nodded. “The Holy Mother has given me permission to speak” The old lady reached into the neck of her flower-print polyester dress and pulled a tissue out from somewhere inside. She dabbed at her upper lip, at the corners of her old, milky eyes. ”Cielito,” the old lady began, using an endearment from Monica’s childhood. “I agree with the Virgin, I think it’s time.” She gnawed her gums and stared into her tissue, then gripped Monica’s hand with surprising strength. “By now you probably know your mother didn’t die, right?” Her eyes were suddenly bright. “She survived that terrible incident at El Trovador, where the military killed my Maximiliano. She came to see me before she left for Honduras, because she wanted to tell me how my son died, why, and who did it”

  Monica seemed to float above the scene, watching her own face framed in the elastic of that ridiculous hairnet, the half-moons of sweat at the pits of her blouse. She even saw Will come up behind her, and before he kneeled before her, she knew that his face was registering his realization that something monumental was happening, that her heart was undergoing, at this very moment, a molecular reconfiguration.

  “Your mama comes to see me sometimes when she’s on a research project, living on a big ugly ship that collects samples of things.” Francisca sniffed and dabbed at herself some more. “She was traumatized when my Maximiliano and the others died,” she said, pointing a bony finger at her own temple. “I tried to convince her that running away was a mistake, that she would regret it, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  Will asked, “Are you okay?”

  She nodded but was seized by an uncontrollable, feverish shivering. “My mother must really hate me,” she said, knowing that she sounded like a child, that the word hate was a quicker, easier term than what was required. Still, whatever it was, abandonment was just as lonely and boundless and sickening. That her mother was alive was a concept in the realm of the surreal, like the discovery that water is imaginary or that death is purely optional. After that, nothing can make sense anymore.

  “She doesn’t hate you,” Francisca said, and for a second Monica didn’t know what she was talking about, so far had she journeyed mentally from her own words. “I don’t understand it either,” Francisca rasped. “But by now Alma ought to be ready to give you an explanation. She’s lived long enough to regret the consequences of her decision.”

  “Where is she?” Monica whispered, looking around, as if Alma might step out from behind a six-foot vat of curdled milk fat.

  “Where a person is physically matters less than where a person is here.” Francisca pointed to her heart. “You have to be ready to travel a great emotional distance for her. But she is not far. Physically.”

  “Is she mentally ill or something?” Monica asked.

  “No, nothing like that. It’s just that she’s one of those people who are very good at looking forward, not back. Most of us around here aren’t like that. Some see her as cold for that reason.”

  “I wasn’t expecting any of this,” Monica said, shaking her head in disbelief, one hand over her mouth.

  Francisca looked distressed. “You didn’t know she was alive? I thought you came here because you knew and wanted to find out where she is.”

  Monica said, “I didn’t know, Francisca. I’ve always felt that some things didn’t add up, but I didn’t imagine that she was alive. Where is she now?”

  Francisca’s eyes clouded and she mashed her gums. She said wearily, “Your mother is trying to shut down my granddaughter’s clinic. The whole thing is a great distress for me. I don’t want to get caught in the middle. I love them both.”

  It dawned on Monica that whether the old lady was conscious of it or not, she had an underlying motivation to blow Alma’s cover. For most people, blood ties still ranked above loyalty to employers and benefactors; even if those boundaries had become blurred over time.

  “So she’s here in El Salvador?”

  “She’s on a research ship, out at sea, on this side of Central America. They come into a port every week for supplies, at a small station owned by the university’s new marine school.”

  So they’re still close, Monica thought. How else would an illiterate, elderly woman know that the national university has a new marine school—or that Alma’s on a research ship versus any other sort of ship?

  Will cleared his throat and spoke. “We’re in El Salvador because my wife is being treated at Clinica Caracol. … Do you know why Alma wants to shut it down?” Will spoke in coarse, “Newyorican” Spanish.

  Francisca shrugged. “She says the studies of veneno are too immature, that it shouldn’t be used on people.” Suddenly, she brightened and said, “Fernanda is marrying your cousin Marco. They’re in business together.”

  Ignoring the last comment, Will said, “Alma thinks the cone venom treatment is dangerous? My God, my wife has another treatment scheduled in two days.”

  The old lady shook her head and squinted one eye. “I wonder if Alma isn’t just jealous. She always wanted to find those cones.”

  They all looked at each other for a moment.

  “She has a point,” Monica mumbled in English to Will, who looked pale with worry.

  Francisca took a deep breath and exhaled, her old breath stinking of all the years she had swallowed. “Marco is a Borrero, and in El Salvador, you know that what a Borrero wants, a Borrero gets. That hasn’t changed. And in El Salvador, Alma is a dead Borrero. She doesn’t exist. She would have to choose to exist.”

  Monica said, “So why did you think I knew?”

  Francisca smiled. “Because you’re her daughter, and you’re smart. I knew you’d figure it out eventually. Years ago, I told Alma that if you ever came looking for her, I’d tell you everything I know.” She pointed up. “I just had to check with the Virgin to make sure it was the right thing.”

  “So why did she do this, Francisca, why?”

  Francisca shook her old head, and the floppy skin underneath her chin continued to vibrate even when she’d stilled her head. “That part is for her to tell, Cielito.”

  “Where is the marine station, and how do I find out when the ship comes in?” Monica asked.

  “What day is it?”

  “Monday.”

  “It comes in on Wednesday,” she replied. “At noon.”

  IN THE BACKSEAT of the van, Monica dropped her head over the edge of the seat, her hands folded over her stomach, her eyes shut tight. Will slid into the bench seat next to her. He lifted her head and positioned it on his shoulder. He spread his fingers across her forehead, as if to check for a fever. Again, he asked if she was all right. As the driver pulled onto the road that would take them back to the clinic, Monica repeated the old woman’s words: Your mother came to see me before she left for Honduras. She turned to Will and said, “What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

  Will shook his head, eyes wide. He looked out the glass of the van’s window, toward the hulking presence of a volcano in the distance. “The way I see it, there’s only one thing you can do, Monica. Find your mother … and ask her yourself.”

  chapter 15 CRUEL SUMMER

  This stupid bug must think I’m deaf, Yvette thought. They don’t have mosquitoes like this in Connecticut. Where the hell am I, anyway? The insect drove its stinger into her neck. What followed was a maddening itch, a tickle so intense that it made her wish she could scratch it wit
h a rake. The prickles peaked into a maddening crescendo; torture only a hair away from an explosion of relief; her only obstacle was her inability to scratch herself.

  Yvette knew her mother was in the room by her scent. Was Sylvia the only person left on the planet who still wore Jean Naté? Yvette concentrated on trying to lift her hand to swat the vampiric pest that was still circling for a second go at it. Something is happening, she thought. I can wiggle my fingers and toes.

  In the distance, she heard the ocean; the waves of high tide were savage, violent, and unfamiliar. The sound was far enough away to distract her, if only for a second, from the infuriating itch of her skin. She knew that someone would be back to stick another needle in her spine. Now, she willingly submitted to the delirium in exchange for the rewards of the clarity and alertness that consistently followed. Among the last batch of memories she had found the key that connected her to the outside world. She had found the treasure among a pile of useless recollections. It was horrible and shocking footage to watch, but it was the last segment of her life before this. She recognized that this memory was the key that would release her from imprisonment.

  I WONDER IF he recognized my car, Yvette thought for the third time as she headed home in her Mustang. The sun was strong and the air smelled like farm manure and wildflowers, but this time she wasn’t enjoying the ride nearly as much as she had on the way downtown. She gripped the spongy surface of the steering wheel as she tore down Cider Mill Lane, past an ancient red barn on its green cushion of summer grass. A triangular yellow sign warned of a dangerous curve ahead. She tapped on the brake a little. “Cruel Summer” was playing on the radio and she turned it up as loud as the volume dial would go, thinking it was the perfect song to complement her mood. The car curved with the stone wall that wrapped around a pasture of Holsteins. It wasn’t so bad. She sped up again.