The Affairs of the Falcóns

by Melissa Rivero

  Ana tucked the socks inside the shoes then slid them under the bed. She lay down beside him. She almost always slept with her back to him, a force of habit from sharing the space with both him and Pedro. But she had enough room now to lie on her back instead. His feet almost reached the edge of the bed, but lying next to him, with his legs tucked under his chest and his body succumbing to the long night of driving, he seemed small. She felt oddly strong, as if she could protect him. It was not something she felt often. It was a sensation that only occurred to her in these quiet moments, when no one was looking or could tell her otherwise.

  She poked his back. “Despierta,” she whispered again. “It’s already past noon.”

  He pulled the covers closer to him and inched toward the window. “It’s Christmas, Ana,” he muttered. “Mass is at five P.M.”

  “Yes, but we can’t skip this one. If that priest doesn’t sign Victoria’s sheet, she can’t do communion this year. I’d go if I could, but I have to head to Brooklyn later anyway.”

  There was a slight shift in his body. “Are you going to see Señora Aguilar?” he asked. “I heard you on the phone with her yesterday.”

  She straightened at the sound of the name. “I called to check in. She wants me to stop by.”

  He flipped onto his back. “Did she say anything about the deed?” he asked. “We’re behind, Ana.”

  “I already told her we’d be short this month,” she said. “But I’m paying her today. It’ll be the last time we’re short, I promise. Believe me, she hasn’t done anything with that deed.”

  He stared at the ceiling. “I can’t have my mother be a tenant in her own house.”

  “She won’t be,” she said. “Mama just wants to make sure we don’t disappear without paying her, that’s all.”

  “‘Mama,’” he snickered. “What a funny thing to call yourself. Mother of what? Debt? Loans?”

  Opportunity, she thought, though she wasn’t quite sure how to answer him. The word Mama was, in fact, so loaded. “Come on,” she insisted, shaking his shoulder again. “Valeria’s going to be up soon. She’s going to start drinking and I really don’t want to hear her shit, Lucho.”

  “Don’t do this now, Ana.”

  She chewed the inside of her mouth. “That’s the problem,” she said. “You never want to ‘do this.’” She jumped off the bed, slamming the bedroom door behind her as she walked out. Couldn’t do this now, she thought. Could he ever?

  Valeria’s bedroom door was still shut, and Rubén was no longer on the balcony. When she got to the kitchen, she went straight to the package. She tore through the paper and plastic. The powder inside the glass jar glowed and, once the lid popped open, the mélange of tilled earth and sunburned powder stung her nostrils and seeped into Ana’s chest like water through tree roots. It was the scent of her mother, her father. It came from the same red earth that snuck between her toes as a child. It had burned beneath the same scathing sun that saturated her skin. Nothing could replace it, certainly not the turmeric she found at the local Key Food. She went back to her pale, naked fowl, and poured a tiny mound onto its center, careful not to use too much. She let the gilded grinds tumble down the sides of the creature’s breast before brushing them across its cold skin.

  She was too consumed by the memory of a mother and father she’d lost long ago to hear Valeria walk in.

  “Is that mine?” she asked.

  Ana blushed, her naturally red cheeks deepening. “Yes,” she said, without turning. Through the corners of her eyes, she could see Valeria glowing in her fuchsia robe. Unlike Ana, Valeria rarely turned pink, and never red. She was ivory, and proud of her paleness. She never wore anything that didn’t make her look like white fire. The water in her hair made it seem heavy and dark, but it was still blonde, the kind Americans call dirty. But rubia is rubia, and Valeria was blonde.

  “Didn’t you open yours already?” she asked. “Look, I know it’s from the chacra, and your aunt had to make a few calls to get it, but she can always get you more. You think I can just call someone up to get this kind of stuff? I practically grew up in my mother’s boutique in San Isidro, Ana,” she said, as though she lamented her upbringing in an upscale neighborhood in Lima. “It’s not like I could go off and make my own spices. Besides, you said you didn’t mind, remember?”

  How could Ana mind? In the past year, Valeria had made a business out of going back to Peru, making several trips a year, bringing items back and forth. On this most recent trip, she’d left on a cloudy Monday after the long Thanksgiving weekend, dressed in three-inch heels, sunglasses, and a fur-trimmed leather coat. Lucho and Rubén crammed two suitcases and a large army bag into Rubén’s station wagon, all filled with items she planned to sell to old university friends and neighbors: clothes from the outlet malls, handbags from the hidden backrooms of Chinatown, diluted perfumes and colognes from Twenty-Eighth Street, lingerie and fruit-scented lotions. She also took encargos, items Peruvians in their circle could not take themselves either because they lacked a green card or simply didn’t have the money to ship. Vitamins for ailing mothers, light-up sneakers for nieces and nephews, baseball caps for brothers who worked under the sun. Everyone who sent something usually wanted something else in return. Plants, medicine, spices impossible to find in New York for all the talk of it being the capital of the world. Valeria never asked for cash. Most didn’t have much money on hand anyway. But she was happy to barter, and took bits of what people asked her to bring back as payment.

  When Ana asked if Valeria could bring back the palillo, her fee was half of what Ana’s aunt had prepared for her.

  Valeria shook off the water from her hair, drops smacking the wall, the table, and Ana’s cheek. She headed to the fridge, the scent of citrus and honey trailing behind her, and grabbed a can of beer from the six-pack she’d purchased on her way home from the airport that morning, even though she’d brought back bottles of pisco and no one had touched the rum and vodka she kept in the cabinet under the counter.

  “¿Quieres una cervecita?” she asked.

  “It’s a little early for a drink, don’t you think?”

  “This is like water,” she said as she wiped the beer that trickled down her chin and sat at the table. “Your aunt looks great, by the way. She’s thinner, but she doesn’t look acabada like most women do when they lose weight at that age. But she’s lonely, poor thing. That cousin of yours is still up in the mountains. He couldn’t even spend Christmas with her.”

  “He can only come down once or twice a month,” said Ana. “I know she worries, but he loves what he does.”

  “I couldn’t do it,” said Valeria. “Teach in those villages, if you can even call them that. Campesinos are so hardheaded too. Practically unteachable. But I guess you and your family understand your people better than I do.”

  “That we do,” she said, as she finished pounding the palillo into the pink skin and put the chicken in the oven. “There’s a lot that most limeños wouldn’t understand.”

  “I suppose so,” said Valeria. “There must be a lot that Lucho doesn’t.”

  She was tempted to agree. After all, there was much that a light-skinned man, born and raised in Lima, did not understand about a woman, brown and nurtured in Peru’s womb. There was much Valeria herself couldn’t understand, even as a woman, but Ana knew better than to take the bait. If she bad-mouthed her husband, Valeria would certainly tell him. The tone of her voice, however, could be small and disarming at times, like it was at this particular moment, and Ana wondered if perhaps she actually cared to know about all the ways that Lucho couldn’t understand.

  When she didn’t respond, Valeria continued. “How long’s it been now,” she asked, “since you celebrated Christmas with your aunt? Five years?”

  Ana nodded. “Just about. Pedro wasn’t even crawling.”

  “Nineteen eighty-nine was it?” Valeria drew a sharp breath. “How quickly the years go by. And look at you. Still living like nomads.”

/>   “This is temporary,” said Ana. She could feel the blood race up to her neck and face. “And if it bothers you so much—”

  “It doesn’t,” Valeria interrupted. “But if you don’t mind me asking, how is the apartment search going?”

  “We’re looking,” she said. There was, in fact, no rush to rent apartments in the neighborhoods they could afford. No employments to verify, no credit checks. They could’ve moved in to a one-bedroom railroad with a water-stained ceiling and fading hallway lights the very same month they moved out of their last one. But Ana insisted they wait. She hoped that time might turn up something better. An apartment without torn laminate floors, perhaps, or rooms with light switches instead of single bulbs with strings limping down their sides. More than anything, she wanted a better neighborhood, or at least a safe block for the children. “We saw an apartment in Los Sures last week, but there’s no way we can fit both beds in the bedroom.”

  “You’re looking in your old neighborhood?”

  “It’s close to the school and I can walk to the factory.”

  Valeria jutted her lower lip. “And my cousin, the cab driver. Is he finding work okay?”

  “Things picked up around Thanksgiving. Yesterday was busy. You were his last ride this morning. He’s not working tonight.”

  “What do you mean he’s not working tonight? He leased the car for the night shift.”

  “Yes, but he’s not working tonight,” she said, “or New Year’s Eve.”

  Valeria scoffed. “Well, it’s not his car. It’s probably best he stay home on New Year’s Eve anyway, with all those borrachos out on the street. The job is dangerous as it is. You always hear about drivers getting mugged or worse. But you need that money, don’t you? God knows that seems to be more important than Lucho’s safety.”

  “Of course it’s not,” said Ana. “But we can’t stop working because we’re afraid.”

  “No one’s saying that,” said Valeria. “But believe me, it could be a lot easier if it was just the two of you here.” It was the one piece of advice Valeria offered so readily that Ana wondered if she understood what it was to be a mother. “I know Filomena’s getting older, but she’s willing to help. And who better to raise Vicki and Pedro than their grandmother?”

  The thought of anyone taking her place as their mother made Ana bristle. “With all those car bombs going off in Lima,” she said, “and soldiers at every corner? Yes, it sounds like a much better place for my kids.”

  “The soldiers should make you feel safe.”

  “Safe? The military is just as bad as the terrorists.”

  “It was terrible when you left,” said Valeria, “but it’s not that bad now. And it’s not like there are bombs going off everywhere. My aunt lives in a safe neighborhood. Safer than most. You and Lucho can stay here, work, send money back. And Vicki and Pedro can get a good education in Lima. You can send them to private schools if you want. What have you got in Brooklyn? Gangueros, viciosos. Apartments infested with rats and cockroaches. Shitty ceilings, like the one that fell that time, when you lived on Montrose. Remember that?”

  “Of course I do, but you’re exagger—”

  “No, I’m not. You’re lucky that ceiling didn’t fall on one of the kids. If it had, then what? You’d have an injured child or worse. Child services, the police! And immigration right there, like this,” she said, snapping her fingers, “just waiting to put you in handcuffs and back on a plane to Peru.” She turned in her chair, leaning her head back against the wall. “Immigration will always be after you. Doesn’t that wear you out, Ana? All the running and hiding just because you don’t have documents?”

  Documents. Papeles. How easy would it be if they had papeles. A well-made green card or seldom-used social security number was a chance for a better job, an education even. Pay for the good ones, she was told, in case someone checks, and she did. She paid hundreds for documents she was told her family needed. She learned quickly that no one really checks.

  A person could get by on fake documents, sure, but if you had real ones—an actual green card and social security number—you were practically a gringo. You were almost American. That was Valeria.

  “I know you don’t want to be separated from the children,” she said. “I get that. I’m a mother too. And maybe the solution is that you all go back. There’s no shame in that, but you have to be realistic. You have no money. You don’t have a place to live. You’ve got both kids in Catholic school. You don’t want them to go to public school, okay, that’s your misplaced pride if you ask me.”

  “It’s not misplaced pride,” she said. “They’re safe there. There’s discipline. They’re getting a good education. Victoria’s speaking English and writing sentences. Pedro’s reading. Half the time he’s translating whatever his sister’s saying. They’d separate my kids from the rest of the class if they were in public school, you know that.”

  “But how long do you think you’ll be able to pay that tuition?” she countered. “What are you going to do when you have to start paying rent again?”

  She had no answer. How she’d pay the tuition once they left was something she had avoided thinking about simply because tuition, more so than rent, was something that had to be paid, always.

  “You have to get over this pride of yours, Ana. You’re just like every other cholo that got here before you. Those few semesters at that technical school mean nothing here. You work in a factory. Lucho drives a car for a living.”

  Ana held on to the counter as her stomach did a turn.

  “Son ilegales, Ana.”

  Her stomach clenched. “I know what we are, Valeria. But we’re not going anywhere. My children aren’t going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere. We came here as a family and we’re staying as a family. I’ll keep sewing curtains and wiping toilet seats if I have to, and so will Lucho.” She held on as her stomach settled. “But we’re not leaving.”

  There was no retort this time. Valeria’s advice was practical, a solution to Ana’s financial dilemma. But she wanted no one else raising her children.

  She grabbed the cloth from the counter and pulled the oven door open. A salted cloud emanated from its mouth, stinging her face, then a chair creaked behind her.

  Vete, she thought.

  But although Valeria was gone, her words clung to the sharpness of the spice that now filled the room. The air tasted bitter with every inhalation.

  Ana grabbed a fork. The heat poured into her lungs. She poked through the bird’s thick skin. It had already begun its transformation from carcass to sustenance, sucking in the gold powder and crisping in the heat. But its skin was still raw and parts of it still bled.

  2

  NIGHT SETTLED IN EARLY THAT CHRISTMAS DAY, AND BY 5 P.M., PURPLE hues had leaked into the cloudless blue sky. Lucho and the children, dressed in Sunday mass attire, left Lexar Tower for the local church they attended since their move. Ana stayed behind to finish dinner and managed to steal a few minutes to herself before heading to Mama’s building.

  She needed to collect herself before she headed to the place. She sat in front of her altar, dressed in a snug long-sleeved shirt and a pair of acid-washed jeans. Her hair, now out of the ponytail, was twisted up into the mouth of a butterfly clip. She lit a candle as she gathered her thoughts into a prayer. What does one pray for when one cannot pay a debt? To pay it off, of course, but Ana was fearful of those prayers, aware that they were often tied to an illness or a death or some other loss she knew she could not bear. Instead, she prayed for things the saints could not oppose. Calmness, strength, the ability to say only what was needed to be heard.

  The room chilled. She opened her eyes, expecting whatever had made her shiver to have also extinguished the flame, but it continued to burn. She blew it out, suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of being seen. She reached for her maroon sweater, hanging on the vanity’s chair. The garment had cloaked her body during her pregnancies in Peru, and it continued to comfort her on cool nights in New Yo
rk. Beside the chair, laying on the edge of the vanity, was a notebook she recognized. It wasn’t the marble notebooks Lucho had begun to fill since he started driving a cab, but the tattered, leather-bound notebook she had given him years ago, over dinner, weeks after he confessed that he liked to write poetry.

  She threw on her sweater, then instinctively looked around the room to make sure no one was watching. She opened the notebook carefully, as if its pages might disintegrate at the mere touch of a finger that didn’t belong to its owner. She skimmed the sheets bloated with old addresses and crossed-out word search puzzles, pausing momentarily at the ones with lines filled only halfway through, fragments that didn’t reach the end of the margins. Lyrics, she thought, or lines from a poem. Were these his poems? she wondered. It occurred to her that’d it been years since she’d seen the notebook. Had he ever stopped writing?

  She shut it, realizing that whatever her husband had written in those pages, he hadn’t meant for her to know. She blew out the candle, grabbed the red gift bag with the bottle of hand lotion she’d set aside earlier that day, and headed out the door.

  A light rain fell, the late afternoon warmer than she expected. Once she sat on the hard, gray seat of the Manhattan-bound 7 train, she took off her hood and scarf, and unzipped her coat as the train catapulted above the prickly parts of Queens. The view from it was familiar now, and she’d begun to develop a history with some of the stops along the ride. The mall where she had done most of her Christmas shopping. The cemetery where an old neighbor from their first Brooklyn apartment was now buried. Even the pawn shop with the large diamond on its awning was visible when the train passed its station. It was where she’d given up their wedding bands, her mother-in-law’s earrings, even the gold ring she’d taken from her own mother’s drawer days after she died.

  Other than the buildings, which spoke of her memories, the train was silent. She welcomed the time to not think: not think about the money, about work or the kids, not think about staying or going back. She was not going back.