Furia

by Yamile Saied Méndez

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he whispered, his hand cupping my face.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, breathless.

  The tug of real life pulled at me, but I still floated in a daze as I made my way upstairs and watched him drive away.

  11

  No one but Nico was home when I arrived, and I thanked whichever guardian angel was on duty for this small grace. My dog did his happy dance while I filled a vase and put my flowers in it, hoping they would live forever, but a shower of petals dropped when I took the cellophane off.

  Eventually I’d have to tell my family about Diego, but for now, I wanted to hold on to the golden glow of the afternoon and keep it sacred in my heart. I wished I could stash the memories of us dancing and the warmth of his lips on mine under my mattress with the yellow lollipop.

  Being with Diego was like stepping into a parallel world where I was beautiful. Important. When he’d shivered at my touch, I’d felt powerful and unstoppable. As the minutes passed, the afternoon began to feel like it had happened to another person in another lifetime. Now, back in reality, I was crashing.

  A little note in my mom’s handwriting sat by the phone as if we lived in 1999. Call Roxana. Once again, guilt squirmed inside me. After I tried calling her on Diego’s cell, I’d forgotten about her. But I couldn’t talk to anyone yet. I’d see her at school tomorrow.

  I gazed at the estampita on my nightstand. La Difunta Correa had died trying to save her husband, and although her sacrifice had cost her own life, she’d become immortal. But her journey didn’t speak to me. If I followed Diego, where would I end up? What doors were closing with each decision that I made?

  The emotions from the last few days caught up with me, and I climbed into bed, intending to close my eyes for only a few minutes. Hours later, I woke to the sound of my doorknob turning.

  “Camila, open.” My father’s voice sent me into high alert. “I want to speak with you.”

  Nico stretched in the bed beside me and looked at me as if asking what was going on.

  “Open the door,” my father’s voice boomed.

  Outside my window, even the crickets went quiet with terror. The door handle jiggled until it finally broke with a crack. My dog growled and jumped from the bed before I could stop him.

  I froze. I couldn’t even call Nico back.

  Once when I was in kindergarten and I was still perfect and beloved because my body hadn’t changed yet, my dad and I had walked to school hand in hand. He’d pointed at a baby sparrow dying on the sidewalk. It had fallen from the nest before it even had the chance to open its eyes and see the world. It was exposed to the biting wind; ants crawled out of its mouth.

  Now, standing in front of my father, wearing only a long T-shirt and underwear, I felt like that doomed bird.

  He lifted a hand, and like a child, I cowered. Nico barked twice, the sound piercing my ears.

  “¿Qué te pasa? Why do you do this?” my father asked, as if I were the one who had just broken into a room and breached someone else’s defenses. “What’s gotten into you, Camila?”

  Nico barked again.

  “Perro de mierda, shut up!” My father turned on Nico and struck him with the back of his hand. Nico squealed in pain and streaked out of the room.

  “Leave him alone!” I yelled. “What are you doing?”

  Across the hallway, sitting on her bed, my mom warned, “Camila.”

  Pablo’s door remained closed, but I felt his presence, quailing as he waited for each word to drop like a hammer. I was on my own.

  “Why did you hit him?”

  My father hissed, “Lower your voice. We don’t want the neighbors to talk about us more than they already do.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s all online,” he scoffed. “How Diego’s in town and all the women, including you”—he pointed his finger at me—“are throwing themselves at him, wanting to be a new Wanda or Antonela.”

  I had never wanted to be like Icardi’s wife or Messi’s. Not that there was anything wrong with them, but I wasn’t looking for that. It wasn’t like that. I knew people would talk about Diego and me. I just hadn’t imagined the word would spread this fast.

  I crossed my arms and squeezed them against my body.

  “Listen,” my father said. “I see the way you look at Diego.” In a low whisper that couldn’t possibly carry to my mom, he added, “All this time, your mom thought you kept sneaking out to be with a boy, but I didn’t think you were into boys, to be honest.” My blood roared in my ears. He continued in a louder voice, “To my surprise, your mother and I noticed how he looks at you, too. We’ve been talking . . .”

  The magic of my afternoon with Diego dimmed and then flickered. I tried to hold on to the thrill of his hand on mine as he taught me how to drive, how the wind had tangled his hair by the river, that look in his eyes when he’d called me his girl and given me the flowers. But the images curdled, stained by my father’s implications.

  I implored La Difunta for her protection again, but I had done nothing for her. Why would she listen to me now? My dad’s words soaked everything they touched with tar.

  “I mean, you were acting like a cat in heat, Camila. What did you think that was going to lead to?”

  “Andrés,” my mom warned from her room, but he ignored her.

  “You need to play your cards smart. He has a lot of money and an amazing career ahead of him. Imagine where he’ll be five years from now. Your life could turn into a fairy tale if you’re as smart as you pretend to be. Yours and ours, because of course you’ll help your family when fortune smiles on you.”

  My tongue knotted, and the air in my lungs turned into steam. I took in the words in silence, but later, I’d purge them from my body. I’d vomit them up and shit them out and stomp on them until they were forgotten. But for now, I stood.

  “Well . . .” he urged with a hand motion. “Say something.”

  “It’s not like that,” I whispered.

  My father showed me his hands, palms up. “The devil knows more for being old than for being the devil, negrita.” He sounded just like a loving father. “And I just want the best for you, mi amor. Haven’t I cared for you and your education and future?” For him, my whole childhood had been a business investment. “I mean, you go to that private school with the nuns, and you’ve had English lessons. You have your licenciatura, which you haven’t used, but you have it. You have a home, and although we don’t have luxuries, you’ve never gone hungry. The only thing I ask in return is that you don’t throw away the opportunities that life sends your way. Today life offered you a silver platter, and you have only to pick what’s best for you and your family.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Papá.” If he was going to ask me to do this, I wanted him to say it. He couldn’t dance around it.

  He laughed, and his voice boomed off the walls.

  “You want me to be blunt? To spell it out for you? Well, then, don’t give it out for free.”

  It.

  “If you still have something going on with another boy, don’t tell Diego about it. I mean, Diego’s a good boy. I wouldn’t let him inside the house if I suspected he was a druggie or a maricón, but he has a dark past. Who knows what happened? People abandon babies all the time, but to abandon an eight-year-old boy? Now, that’s coldhearted. He’s nice-looking, blanquito, with his light brown hair and those greenish eyes, but he’s damaged goods. In any case, now that he’s famous, none of that matters.”

  There was so much wrong with what my father had just said that I didn’t know where to start arguing with him. Besides, the words wouldn’t come. He reached out and brushed my hair from my eyes. I forced myself not to flinch.

  “Things might not work out in the long run, but make the most of it, if you know what I mean. Once men taste the forbidden fruit, they lose interest.
And as soon as Diego goes back to Europe and becomes more famous . . . because he will, oh, he will. I know good fútbol when I see it.” He clapped his hands, and this time I did flinch. “Techniques can be learned, but not that flair. You can’t teach it. I mean, look at your brother! How many times have I tried to teach him? Pablo is a nice player, but if he doesn’t shape up, he’ll be forgotten in a couple of years. Now, Diego . . . Diego’s the real deal. He really is.”

  He swallowed. His hands were shaking.

  He wasn’t really speaking to me. He was working things out in his mind. All he wanted was a bite of what Diego had.

  I was his way in. He didn’t even know that I had that flair, too. For him, I was just a tool to get what he wanted. But I wouldn’t help him get Diego’s money and glory, and as hell was my witness, he wouldn’t get any of mine, either. He’d be the last person to know I played fútbol, and when he tried to take credit for my success, I’d squash him like a cockroach.

  By then adrenaline was coursing through my body, and I started shaking. My father stared at me, squinting, as if he was wondering what I was doing here in my room. “Go to bed,” he said. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  My mom and I locked eyes from across the hallway before he shut their door in my face.

  My lock was broken.

  It couldn’t protect me anymore. It never could.

  Nico was waiting at the end of the dark hallway. I couldn’t even say anything to him. Tentatively, he walked back to my room and sat next to me as I dragged my dresser in front of the broken door, conscious that I was scratching the floor, that I was probably waking up the neighbors. But it was the heaviest thing I had.

  12

  Throughout the night, my father’s words burrowed into every crevice of my mind like vermin. By the morning, the pain they had inflicted was a dull echo. Not only was my future at stake, but so was Diego’s. I would not be the vulture feeding off his fame.

  Love can be a burden and a curse. I wasn’t going to be that for Diego.

  I had a secret card to play, and I had to be smart about it. I couldn’t tell my mom about the tournament. She hadn’t stood up for me when I was little or last night, so why would she support me now?

  As I got ready for school, I carefully packed my practice clothes in my backpack.

  Nico, my loyal honor guard, walked me to the kitchen.

  “Buenos días.” My mom sat at the little table against the window in a single beam of morning sunshine. Her index finger was hooked around a piece of ivory silk, as if she’d been trying to feel the shape the fabric wanted to take. I kissed her cheek. Before I pulled away, she grabbed my wrist softly and whispered, “Papi didn’t mean it, negrita. You don’t have to do anything with any boy to save us.”

  She let go of me and motioned to the chair in front of her. On the table, a café con leche was steaming. She put her fabric aside and made my favorite breakfast: toast with butter and tomato marmalade.

  “I’d like to know how your date with Diego went yesterday.” She spoke in a low voice, glancing back at the hallway every few seconds. “Or will that be another secret?”

  “Mami, I don’t have any secrets. It’s impossible to have a secret in this house. Please—”

  “You don’t need to hide your feelings from me. I’m your mother. I just want you to know”—she licked her lips and swallowed before continuing—“that you can tell me anything.”

  For a second, part of me leaned into the warmth of her offer. I wished I could confide in her.

  And then she said, “I was a girl like you once, and I got pregnant with Pablo in my last year of high school.”

  A cold dread fell over me; I didn’t need to be a math genius to understand that there had only been six months between my parents’ wedding and Pablo’s birth. Still, I’d never been reckless enough to mention it, and no one in our family had ever confirmed it.

  “I was so afraid of telling my mom,” she continued. “My dad had died the year before. He had never liked your father. I thought it was because my dad was a Newell’s fan.”

  Fútbol was woven into every family story, even the telenovela versions. Especially the telenovela versions. We were such a stereotype. What if I told her I was a futbolera and that I had been born with the kind of talent my father was obsessed with? She’d turn and run to him with my secret as if she’d found a precious stone. He would forbid me to play or, worse, use me like he used Pablo, like he wanted to use Diego.

  My mom’s face quirked in a tentative smile.

  “My dad was the odd Leproso in Arroyito,” she said, “but he didn’t mind the rabid Central fans and players who teased him relentlessly. But he hated your dad. My mom, on the other hand, adored Andrés. He can be charming when he wants to, and he was to my mom. When my dad died, I leaned on him. I depended on him for everything. He was handsome and famous, and every other girl envied my good luck. He’d chosen me.”

  Ay, Mamá . . .

  But then, hadn’t I glowed with joy when Diego had called me his girl? He and my dad were different men, but I couldn’t ignore their similarities. Both were handsome professional players any girl would lose her head for.

  My mom continued, “He had a great future ahead, and if it hadn’t been for the—”

  “—Paraguayo de mierda,” I said automatically.

  She sent me a warning look. It was ironic that we could be talking about fornication, lies, and betrayals, but swearing wasn’t allowed, but I didn’t say anything.

  “The thing is, had my father been alive, I wouldn’t have dated your father. Or if fate had brought us together and I had ended up pregnant, my father wouldn’t have made me marry Andrés.”

  “Why?” Never before had she said so plainly that marrying my dad had been the biggest mistake of her life. What did this make Pablo and me?

  “Because my father loved me, and he knew the kind of man your father would become.”

  Or the man he’s always been, which you didn’t want to see.

  I drank my café con leche.

  “My father would’ve been disappointed that I had to drop out of school—the nuns wouldn’t let me finish.” Her eyes filled with tears, and her hands trembled as she wiped them with a kitchen towel. “But he wouldn’t have made things worse by shackling me to a boy who really didn’t—doesn’t—love me.”

  While my father would jump at the chance to squeeze everything out of Diego’s love for me until all that was left was ruin and sorrow.

  Whether I liked it not, I had to acknowledge that my mother and I had a lot in common. We weren’t as different as I liked to think. I wasn’t better than her.

  Our family was stuck in a cosmic hamster wheel of toxic love, making the same mistakes, saying the same words, being hurt in the same ways generation after generation. I didn’t want to keep playing a role in this tragedy of errors.

  I was la Furia, after all. I’d be the one to break the wheel.

  But I didn’t know how to help my mom.

  “Papá loves you, Mami.” I patted her hand, and she flinched.

  I didn’t know if I had just lied to her or not. After all, my father had stayed with her. As far as I knew, he’d never even hinted at leaving. They pretended things were all right even when every sign pointed toward problems that would have sent normal people running in opposite directions.

  She dried her eyes again. “I’m sorry for crying like this. I must be starting the menopause, you know?”

  I couldn’t help it—I laughed. “In Hollywood, people your age are just starting to have babies. Look at Jennifer López. She’s older than you, Mami.”

  She smiled sadly. “I don’t look anything like her. Look at me! Compared to her, I’m a cow.” She motioned to her body. She wore jeans and a black blouse. Her curves were impossible to hide, even with dark colors.

  “If you put makeup
on and had a personal stylist like she does, you’d look even better than J. Lo, Mama.”

  She beamed at me, her eyes sparkly with tears, and didn’t even nag me for talking like a country girl. Then she asked, “How are the med school studies going?”

  It took me a fraction of a second to get my bearings. She thought I was studying for the MIU, the college prep classes everyone took in February, but I recovered quickly. “Perfect. By the way, I’m going to Roxana’s to study after school. I’ll be late.”

  “Why don’t you ever come study here, hija? You’re always at her house.”

  “She has Wi-Fi, Mama.”

  Her ears were trained to detect any kind of lie, but her heart was trained to ignore the things she couldn’t deal with. She nodded and patted my hand. “Be safe, please, hija. I’m so proud of you. The first one to graduate high school and go to the university. I wanted to be a doctor, too, you know, before . . . everything. Doctora Camila sounds good, doesn’t it? Pablo never had the chance to study, but you do.”

  “Doctora Camila sounds good, Mami.” I kissed her cheek again, grabbed my things, and left.

  At the bus stop, posters of missing girls watched me as I stood in line, shivering. As soon as the bus turned the corner and headed in our direction, the crowd waiting in various degrees of sleepiness perked up. The driver hit the brakes, and people scurried to secure seats.

  “After you, señorita.” A gruff masculine voice startled me.

  A young guy dressed in blue factory clothes stepped to the side to let me through.

  Miraculously, there were a few empty seats, including one in the single-person row on the right. I took one near the front, and the factory guy made his way to the back of the bus. Perfect—I didn’t want to have to talk to him just because of his chivalry. My unfinished accounting homework was burning in my backpack. I might not have been aiming to become a doctor like my mom believed, but I still needed to graduate. I was behind in several subjects.