Hot Sur

by Laura Restrepo

  “But she doesn’t even know me,” Rose objected. “It’s a crazy idea, like all the rest of them. She won’t come with me.”

  “Show her this,” María Paz said, removing the necklace with the one-third-coin pendant and giving it to Rose. “It’s like a password. She knows what it is. She has a third of the coin also. Tell her that I’m waiting outside.”

  “I won’t even know how to deal with her; you said she was a little weird . . .”

  “Not a little, she’s weirder than a square-headed dog. But you have people skills. Just don’t talk much, and especially don’t touch her. Sometimes she bites when people touch her.”

  “Same as Dix. That I can deal with. But just tell me specifically what she suffers from.”

  “Some kind of autism, but I don’t really know. No one knows, not even her. If she does know, she hides things from the doctors. She’s always playing games to see how she can confuse them, so it’s not their fault if they can’t hit upon a precise diagnosis. What mental disorder does my sister suffer from? All of them and none of them.

  “What do you want to know? Let’s see, Violeta likes to make her bed perfectly, smoothing it out and leaving not even a little wrinkle in the sheets, as if she were in the army, and at night, she barely moves so not to mess the sheets up. She has very sensitive skin, and hates when clothes scratch her or are too tight. She only eats white food—milk, pasta, bread, and stuff like that—and will vomit if she tries food of any other color. She speaks gently and prefers not to raise her voice, and she is also hypersensitive to noise. She calls me Big Sis and I call her Little Sis. Let’s see . . . What else is there? Don’t try to be sympathetic with her, or make any jokes, because she never understands. She likes to exaggerate, like she says she’s dying of hunger because she thinks she really is dying. Definitely do not ask her what she has done lately, because she will feel compelled to tell you everything she has done from morning to night during recent months. If it is small talk, do not ask her to shut up, or tell her, for example, that she’s talking up a storm, because she will become very frustrated and confused, trying to understand how someone can start a storm just by talking. One time, our mother was calling her to come and eat, and Violeta just ignored her. Our mother kept calling her but nothing, so she said, ‘This little girl is deaf as a post.’ Violeta was very offended because she said posts didn’t have ears. You know what I mean?”

  “Sort of. I think I know what I have to do.”

  “Just don’t do much; that’s the best way with her. Just show her the pendant and tell her I’m waiting outside.”

  Rose reluctantly agreed to comply with the assigned task, or at least try, but when he was about to get out of the car, María Paz grabbed his arm.

  “Wait, Mr. Rose. Wait a minute,” she begged him. “Let me take a breath. You have to realize, I haven’t seen Violeta in a long time. Since before Manninpox. My heart is pounding. Let me settle down a bit. Wait, I need some water. That’s better. Help me, Mami. Help me, Bolivia, up there in heaven, let everything go well today, I beg, I beg you, for God’s sake I beg you. Okay, I’ll be fine now.” She closed her eyes for a few minutes, then she sighed and said, “I’m ready. Go, Mr. Rose. Go and bring her to me.”

  Rose was surprised with the look of the school. He had imagined something depressing and gray, but it was a Georgian house in the middle of a forest of maples and conifers; it had a Dutch roof crowned with a brick chimney, white pine siding, a double row of sash windows, and a central front entrance. There was no one outside, as to be expected because of the harsh cold, but Rose could imagine that when the weather was milder, visitors could relax outside with the kids. The interior was spacious and clean, rather empty except for what was necessary: function over form. Alright, thought Rose. Definitely a good place. Must cost a pretty penny to keep someone in here, though. Everything seemed great. Or maybe not everything. Something seemed off, as if the promise of the exterior was not fulfilled within, where the air was muggy with the breath of frustrated expectations. Every detail of the place seemed an attempt to convey the appearance of familiarity and normalcy, but for some reason this aim was never quite achieved. In spite of the marvelous house, inside there was an emptiness reminiscent of the halls of public school during after-school hours, giving rise to the feeling that the world went on ceaselessly outside while the hours remained stagnant within.

  He was greeted immediately and cordially, and then offered a chair and some brochures so he could sit and read while waiting for Violeta. Thus he learned about the different types of rehabilitation programs, winter and summer therapy sessions, and special courses for families of autistic children. All this seemed very sophisticated, thought Rose. And yet, none of it stopped it from seeming like a sort of imprisonment. A benign Manninpox. A ghetto, an orphanage, a sanatorium. The Colombian sisters did not seem destined to enjoy the privilege of free and open spaces, at least not in America. While in the waiting area, Rose made an effort to stay focused on reading the pamphlets and not looking up, to avoid seeming nosy or rudely curious, but he could not help but sense the tension surrounding the troubled youngsters who happened to walk by, the feeling of misdirection and broken harmony, the impersonal metallic ring of their voices, the sour smell of their fears. Rose sat straight and stiff in his chair, as intimidated as one who had entered a temple of alien religion, and he startled when the receptionist announced Violeta’s arrival.

  “Something utterly striking about that girl,” Rose tells me. “I don’t think she even noticed me. She definitely didn’t look at me, avoiding eye contact even after I said hello, which she completely ignored. Yet, when I showed her the pendant, the broken coin, she immediately realized that I somehow was connected to her sister. She became certain and assured, and walked out to the car with me, without me having to ask twice. She didn’t even put on a coat; despite the cold, she went outside with what she had on, jeans and a wool sweater. She showed very little emotion one way or the other about the fact that María Paz had come looking for her. Or I should say, she showed none at all. Never in my life have I seen such a beautiful face as expressionless as hers.”

  “Can you describe her?” I ask Rose. “Violeta. What was she like that first time you saw her?”

  “María Paz had told me about her long hair that fell almost to her waist. But that was gone. Her hair was the opposite, in fact, defiantly short, almost buzzed, at the most half an inch long, like a private in the army. It actually didn’t look bad on her. On the contrary, it helped call attention to the perfection of her features, especially her eyes. Huge eyes, intensely green, like a big cat’s, or in any case not very human. Humongous and green but shallow. I’m not sure how to describe it. Her whole face had a flat overall expression, as if there were some final connection missing. An expression that had no resonance. That’s it. No feedback, no echo. I couldn’t tell you anything about her nose or her mouth, because I’m not sure I even noticed them, lost as I was in her eyes. She was definitely tall and slender, and not dark-skinned like María Paz, but fair. By just glancing at them, you would never guess they were sisters. It’s only after interacting with them for a while that you begin to grasp a resemblance. If you want, I can tell you more about her eyes, because I focused almost entirely on them. The whites were clean, pure, liquid, and the irises were made of concentric circles of revolving lemon green and green gold, a pair of psychedelic, painfully expressionless buttons and yet very beautiful, like those of an antique doll. I’d say she’s a girl of disturbing beauty, but also a bit disturbed herself. Also very sensual, yes. I noticed that even though at first I could only look into her averted eyes. A lustful virgin, perhaps, or rather a young fairy, a somewhat mischievous one. And something told me that this was a lost child for the world, but more lucid and intelligent than other mortals.”

  Rose kept his distance from the sisters when they first saw each other again. It seemed too intimate and too emotional to intr
ude. It was clear that at that moment María Paz was putting it all on the line, double or nothing, that she was making a definitive decision even as she took part in the exchange that Rose observed from a discreet distance, the figures blurred by the viscosity of the cold air. He tells me that there were no hugs or any other physical contact. Violeta would not look directly even at her own sister, and María Paz seemed wary of not slipping up and getting too close, even when she pulled a blanket out of the car because Violeta was so underdressed for the cold. She tried to hand her sister the blanket, Rose says, but Violeta didn’t take it. Instead, she pulled down the sleeves of her sweater, stretching them to cover her hands, which must have been freezing. María Paz cried. That part of it Rose was able to figure out later. Violeta seemed hypnotized by the dogs; all her attention was focused on the three animals. Then María Paz gave her a bag with some gifts, quite wrongheaded it turned out, because the gifts were a few sets of barrettes for her hair, the kind you can get at any drugstore. But what hair? Violeta put them back in the bag after she looked at them and handed them back to her sister.

  “Look, Violeta, this is Mr. Rose,” María Paz said, gesturing for Rose to come closer. “He is a very dear friend who’s going to help us with everything. Say hello, tell him your name.”

  “He’s your boyfriend,” Violeta said.

  “No, he’s not my boyfriend, not at all. He’s a good friend but he’s not going to live with us; no worries, Violeta. He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Your old boyfriend. Like Greg, old.”

  “No, Violeta,” Rose said, “I can assure you. I’m leaving in a little while, and you will stay with your sister, just the two of you.”

  Violeta finally seemed to understand the situation, and she let out a little speech that seemed memorized, addressing Rose, but still not looking at him.

  “I’m autistic,” she said. “Sometimes I seem rude, but only because I’m autistic. I don’t kick or spit on people. I just have autism. Autism. At school, they are teaching me to manage my disease. To laugh when I’m touched. They also teach us music and math. Music and mathematics.”

  “Go get your things and come back,” María Paz said. The moment had come.

  “Go get your things and come back,” Violeta repeated.

  “Just pack a small suitcase, very small, but you have to be quick.”

  “Have to be quick.”

  “Go, love, don’t you see? I’m taking you with me. Just like I promised. Together! Just us, without Greg, without this man, no one. You and me, no one else: Big Sis and Little Sis. Then we’ll no longer be alone. Do you understand me, Violeta?”

  “I can’t fit my stuff in a tiny suitcase.”

  “Bring only what you like the most. I brought clothes for you. New clothes, you’ll see. It’ll be great.”

  “I don’t think the new clothes will fit me very well.”

  “Come on, Violeta, we don’t have time for this. Bring your things. I’ll wait here.”

  “It was all very strange,” Rose tells me. “A difficult moment, surreal, very tense, and there I was, right in the middle of it.”

  Violeta was gone for roughly fifteen minutes. When she returned, it was without a bag or suitcase, just a stuffed animal. A giraffe. María Paz later told Rose that it was the same giraffe Violeta had brought on the plane to America when their mother had sent for them.

  “Good job, Little Sis!” María Paz congratulated her. “You brought your giraffe! Now hop in, we’re going on a trip with the dogs.”

  “With the dogs,” Violeta repeated, but she did not move.

  “Come on, Little Sis,” an anxious María Paz said. “Come, we’ll be together from now on. I promise. Always together.”

  “Always together.”

  “Didn’t you miss me all this time?”

  “All this time.”

  “Listen to me, Violeta, I beg you.”

  “Listen to me, Violeta, I beg you.”

  “I came all the way here for you, Violeta! Come, get in the car so we can go.”

  “Big Sis goes,” said the girl. “Little Sis stays.”

  “Don’t you want to go to Seville?”

  “Go to Seville?

  “We’ll go together, my sweet, together forever. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “Big Sis is going to Seville. Big Sis is going to Seville. Little Sis stays here. Little Sis is fine here,” she said with a tremulous, metallic voice that sounded like the clatter of a typewriter. Then she handed the giraffe to her sister, ran toward the school, and disappeared through the door, without even looking back.

  “I had never seen María Paz as defeated as she was that day,” Rose informs me. “It was as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to her head, as if all the lights had been shut off. I tried to comfort her, saying that the next day was Sunday, also a visiting day, and we could try again. But she said there was no point, that Violeta was the most stubborn creature on the face of the earth. Once she got something into her head, no one could get it out of there. She had made her decision and there was no turning back, María Paz insisted, and I knew she was right. Then I tried to tell her what I had been thinking all along, what to me was more than obvious. I talked honestly with María Paz and told her that I thought Violeta was right. It would without a doubt be better for her there, at that school, an appropriate place for her, where she was clearly nurtured and protected and made to feel good about herself. Much better than scampering around the world with a fugitive sister whose fate was as unpredictable as the winds. I asked her if the pension that paid for the school was secure, because it had to be expensive as hell, and she said it was, that Socorro was in charge of that. Socorro had promised their mother that she would serve as executor of the trust and so far had remained true to her word. I promised María Paz that if at some point Socorro could no longer perform her duties, I would take over. Pro Bono could help me set this up. I’d make payments to the school on time every month, so María Paz shouldn’t worry. I insisted on how much good such an institution did for her sister: it protected her from the constant change that so negatively affects people with her condition, and built confidence with good routines, free from the anxiety and loss of control brought about by new and unforeseen events.”

  “Fuck,” María Paz said, “where are you pulling all that from, Mr. Rose? This morning you didn’t know a thing about such conditions . . .”

  “True, but I read the pamphlets they gave me at the reception desk. I even brought one. Take it,” Rose told her, handing her a booklet with a yellow cover titled Interested in Learning and Sharing About Autism? And then he repeated that when it came to the execution of the trust, she had nothing to worry about.

  “It can’t be, thanks, but no,” María Paz said flatly. “I can’t leave my sister behind, because Sleepy Joe will hurt her.”

  So then they went back into their endless and wary conversation about Sleepy Joe, who he really was and how much harm he could do to Violeta.

  “You’re the one who told me he was harmless,” Rose pressed.

  “I never said he was harmless. I said he was no murderer; it’s different. But he is pissed because he thinks I stole his money. Why is that so hard for you to understand, Mr. Rose? Sleepy Joe is frantic, and he’s going to get even more nuts when he finds out I took off, according to him, with his money. If he can’t get to me, he’ll get even by hurting Violeta. You can bet the house on that. Today, I knew as soon as I saw her that things weren’t going to work as planned. I realized right away that I could not count on Violeta. She has to make a scene about everything. Do you know what I mean? Always. A fucking scene, that’s what she does, throws tantrums whenever she doesn’t get what she wants or if she feels as if she is being forced to do something. Not so bad this time, actually, she remained calm. She didn’t whine, didn’t cry, didn’t let loose with a list of maddening questions like she
always does, sometimes the same question, over and over and over again, until you think that your head is going to explode. But there was none of that this time because her mind was made up. And like I said, no one in this world is as stubborn as she is. Just gave me the giraffe. The giraffe, her dearest possession, the thing that keeps her sane. Like Linus and the blanket he can’t part with, that’s the giraffe for my sister. Yet she gave it to me, and that means she was serious. She knew exactly what she was doing. A willful act, Violeta condemning herself forever by deciding not to come with me. I get it—all the other stuff—I’m not blind. It’s true what they say in the brochures, Mr. Rose. She is terrified of the unknown, takes refuge in her routines, and I was offering the most uncertain and risky adventure. The worst thing for her. I thought she would be excited just to be with me. I thought the best thing for Violeta was always to be with me, by my side. Until today, that’s what I felt and believed. From the time Violeta was a baby, she was fine if she was with her older sister, Big Sis. Apparently that’s not the case anymore. But I can’t leave her here; you have to understand that, Mr. Rose. I have to take her with me, even if I have to kidnap her.”

  Rose tried to suggest that wasn’t the greatest idea, but María Paz’s despair was a solid wall that common sense could not penetrate. At least he was able to convince her to go to a little motel hidden in the woods, where they were able to reserve a couple of rooms without questions about the dogs or having to present IDs.

  Despite its plainness, the place had a cosmic name that Rose remembers well: North Star Shine Lodge. He had learned from Pro Bono about the importance of the names of the motels. They had something to eat at the motel cafeteria, drawing the unwanted attention of the few other diners because of the three dogs sprawled under the table, and because María Paz couldn’t stop crying as she clutched the stuffed giraffe. Rose tells me that everybody there was just as suspicious. He was sure they were in the operations center of who knows what types of illegal activities. At the other end of the room sat three Asian men dressed in black, wearing sunglasses and thin, shiny ties. On the table in front of the men, in plain sight, there were stacks of bills wrapped in plastic.