The Grief Keeper

by Alexandra Villasante

  “What should we do?” I ask, wanting to change the subject. I want to know what our tasks are so I can plan the rest of the day for Gabi. I also want to make sure Indranie didn’t forget that she said Gabi could go to school. I don’t want her to be working in this big house and miss out on classes. I can do most of our work on my own, and if I can’t, maybe she can do some in the morning before school starts.

  “You girls? You should finish eating. Then you can go to the pool. It’s heated,” Olga says with obvious pride.

  “To clean it?” Gabi asks, her nose wrinkling. I nudge her. I know she’s not afraid of work and is probably just afraid that she doesn’t know how to clean a pool. But we will figure it out.

  “No, por supuesto que no,” Olga says with scorn. “You go to the pool to swim, not clean it. We have a man who comes to clean it.”

  Gabi’s face blossoms with delight. She loves to swim and hasn’t been able to do it for many years.

  “We don’t have bathing suits,” I say.

  “Hmm. Maybe I can find something in Rey’s old clothes. You can go to the pool later.”

  I’ve never gone swimming in a pool. Pablo and I would take Gabi to el Club Atlético for swim lessons that Mrs. Rosen paid for—she said it was important for a child to know how to swim. It was too expensive for Pablo and me to swim there, and we had already learned how to swim in the lake by Abuela’s house.

  We’d drop Gabi off to her lesson, then Pablo would hang out with his friends, ignoring me. They would spend all day at el Club, chatting with Liliana, who worked behind the bar stocking the glass bottles of beer and cutting lemons and limes for drinks. Pablo would talk to her, and I would watch her. She was beautiful in a way that made me feel uncomfortable, like I had mariposas en la barriga. She had dyed her light brown hair blond, like the girls in Cedar Hollow, and wore the same kind of makeup—a lot of it to make it look like no makeup at all. I remembered wondering if her skin smelled of limes, but I never had the nerve to ask Pablo.

  “What about school? For Gabi?” I ask Olga.

  She shrugs with her whole body. “That, I do not know.”

  When Gabi finishes breakfast, we go upstairs to change. I stand in front of the closet where Indranie has put the clothes she bought for us. The clothes are pretty—the kind American girls wear—and smell new. The jeans Indranie bought me are called “boot cut,” which makes it sound like they were cut in the shape of a boot, but they aren’t. The wide leg of the jeans hides Dr. Deng’s cuff perfectly.

  “What if you don’t have boots? Do you have to wear jeans that aren’t boot cut?” Gabi asks.

  She’s already changed into a soft blue T-shirt and jeans. Her piyamas are neatly folded on the bed.

  “It’s just the moda, the name of the style. It doesn’t mean you have to wear boots with them. That’s silly.”

  “Yes, but if you did have boots, you shouldn’t need different jeans to wear them. That’s the real silly.”

  “Silliness,” I correct her. I scratch at the skin under the cuff, wishing I could take it off. I’m only allowed to take it off to shower and to put powder on my ankle so my skin doesn’t get irritated. Other than that, it sits on my leg doing nothing. It doesn’t even hum or make any noise. I have trouble believing it’s doing anything.

  “I wish I had boots,” Gabi says, looking down at her blue-and-purple sneakers. “Black ones, like for riding una moto.”

  “Sure, Gabi. One of these days.”

  Once we’re back downstairs, we ask if we can go outside and look around. I expect Olga to say “No” or “Wait to talk to someone in charge.”

  “Of course. Go wherever you want,” she says. “But don’t leave the grounds.”

  “How big can grounds be?” Gabi whispers as we walk out the door.

  “I don’t know. Let’s find out.” I take her hand, but I’m not pulling her forward or back like I did on the carretera, so it feels strange. After a few minutes, she takes her hand away to point at a bluebird sitting on a wooden gate that leads to a garden.

  What I thought was the garden is only one part of a larger garden, with pebbles for paths and strong-smelling plants. Romero, salvia, menta, all herbs good for one thing or another. If they had manzanilla, we could make a tea for stomachaches. At the end of this garden, there is another gate in the brick wall that leads to a much bigger area. Not even the Parque National is this beautiful, this green. The grass leads like a carpet to a long rectangle the color of the sky.

  When we get closer to it, I realize it isn’t sky-colored but reflects the sky. It’s a pool of water, but it’s not deep, so not a pool for bathing.

  “This isn’t the pool, is it?” Gabi asks dubiously.

  “No. It can’t be. It’s too small.”

  “So, what is it for?”

  “Maybe it’s for birds?” I say, though it seems too grand even for American birds.

  We have our jackets on, beautiful ones that Indranie bought us—mine is black and Gabi’s is blue, and they keep us warm without being too heavy. I watch Gabi float a leaf on the water’s surface, adding tiny rocks and sticks to see how many she can add before it sinks.

  Then she wants to play al escondite.

  “Gabi, aren’t we too old for hide-and-seek?”

  “Maybe you are too old, but not me.” She squirms, shaking her arms and legs. “Dale, Sol, I’m bored.” Even though I am enjoying the sun on my face, I agree.

  “But don’t go too far,” I say, because the fear is never very far away.

  * * *

  I sneak up on Gabi in her hiding place, making her jump and laugh. When it’s my turn to hide, I push myself behind a tall bush next to a high balcony of the main house. I hear Gabi calling for me, telling me I have to come out and save her from being attacked by a gang of black cats in top hats. She’s trying to get me to laugh so she can find me. It’s worked before, but I’m too well hidden now. I’ll let her look for me a little longer.

  Above me, I hear a sharp bang. I take half a step out from behind the bush and see the door that leads to the balcony slam shut. I hear breaking glass and step away from the bush to see better. A girl in a white nightgown stands frozen, barefoot, like in a novela. Her long blond hair tangles into hanging knots, and she wears a heavy leather jacket over her nightgown, like she’s forgotten to get dressed or maybe had no time. Her face is a nightmare, a mix of despair and fear. She’s standing on broken glass, leaning against the door to keep it closed.

  “¿Qué pasó?” Gabi whispers. My already racing heart gives an extra-loud thump. She was so quiet that I didn’t hear her coming.

  “No sé. Be quiet. I don’t want anyone to see us.”

  The door the girl leans against rattles, but she’s putting all her weight on it, not allowing it to open.

  There’s yelling from inside the house, but I can’t hear what’s being said. From the far side of the garden where we walked in, there’s more shouting. I don’t want us to be found here, watching someone else’s trouble. That is how trouble spreads. But I can’t look away.

  With a lurch, the girl pushes against the door one last time and runs for the balcony railing. Her foot is on the ledge, her hands gripping the iron. She only needs one good push to throw herself over—and right in front of us.

  I grab Gabi and hold her head against my shoulder. I don’t want her to see. The girl’s nightgown catches, and she’s pulled back a little. No, it’s not caught, it’s Indranie, grabbing at the white cotton gown and using it to pull the girl away. The girl’s face is pure agony.

  “Let me go!”

  Memories of the carretera rush into my mind. Gabi’s hand slipping from my sweaty one as we hung on to the side of a truck full of too many people. Watching a boy we had traveled with for two days fall off the truck like a dead leaf.

  On the balcony, the girl struggles to free herself of arms, h
ands, to free herself into the sky.

  “Rey, don’t. Come on, honey, talk to me,” Indranie says, pulling on the girl’s jacket. Gabi pushes away from me. I think the girl is going to wriggle out of the jacket, tear the nightgown away somehow. She looks like a trapped bird. Traci steps onto the balcony and plucks the girl off her feet as if she weighs nothing. The girl’s arms and legs swing and kick. We watch one bare foot kick Indranie in the face. And then the girl’s eyes find mine, and it’s as if I have jumped off the balcony. Her look makes me part of what is happening. Her face, her eyes—I can’t bear to see them. I close my eyes.

  “Sol,” Gabi says after a moment or one hundred moments.

  “¿Qué?”

  “It’s over.”

  I look back up at the balcony, at the broken door and the fluttering white curtains. I want to push the image from my mind, but it’s stuck there, like a piece of cloth on a nail. I see the girl’s face, her eyes so lost, and it’s like she has a message for me, something I need to know.

  No, it’s not over.

  Chapter 9

  I urge Gabi back down the pebble path to the carriage house. In the hallway, there is a sign in English and in Spanish telling us to take off our shoes. Music blares in another room, and I can hear Olga singing “Lágrimas Negras,” a song I have always hated.

  “Come on,” I say to Gabi, and lead her to the kitchen table. I get juice out of the fridge and pour us both a cup.

  “What happened to that girl?” Gabi’s voice trembles and she coughs to hide it.

  “I don’t know. I’m sure she’s fine. You saw Traci. She got her safe.”

  “Did you see how she kicked Ni-ni?” She whistles, equal parts shocked and impressed.

  Gabi started calling Indranie “Ni-ni” as a joke. Ni esto, ni lo otro—neither this nor that—because when Gabi would ask simple questions, Indranie would answer them in a complicated way. “It’s not that it’s hard or it’s easy, it’s just different” was a typical Indranie answer.

  Indranie walks into the kitchen holding an ice pack to her face.

  “Ni-ni! Are you okay?” Gabi asks.

  “I’m fine,” she says tiredly. “I’m tougher than I look.”

  She looks terrible. Her usually neat ponytail is half undone and her blouse is crooked, a button missing.

  “Come on, girls, let’s sit down and talk.”

  I give Indranie a little juice in a cup because I don’t know how to make coffee with the machine they have here.

  “I have to say, this is not the way I wanted this to go.” Indranie takes a sip of juice and makes a face. Under the ice pack, her forehead is red and swollen.

  “Was that girl the donor?” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

  “Yes. She had the transmitter implanted two days ago. She is not happy about it.”

  “And she tried to kill herself?”

  Indranie doesn’t answer.

  “That’s awful,” Gabi says.

  Indranie puts the ice pack down on the table. “You have to understand. People handle grief in very different ways. It isn’t the same for everyone. Some people can manage with help, and others lock themselves into grief. Still others become stronger by it. And it isn’t only grief. It’s trauma. When Dr. Deng started this program, he wanted to help people. Victims of terrible assaults, soldiers who were damaged in body and in spirit. That’s a kind of grief that is even more entrenched, when it is augmented by guilt and fear.”

  I don’t understand all of Indranie’s words, and I think that maybe she isn’t really talking to us anymore.

  “Why didn’t I feel any of her grief?” I ask. That’s been at the back of my mind. That I failed somehow in the experiment and that is why this girl nearly killed herself. If I’d been good enough, I could have made her feel less like dying.

  “Rey won’t wear the cuff. The transmitter won’t work without the cuff. She’s refusing point-blank to participate.” Indranie sighs, tilting back in her chair.

  “Why would she do that? Why would she rather die than feel better?” Gabi asks.

  “It’s complicated,” Indranie says. She tosses the melting ice pack into the sink and turns on the coffee machine. I watch her put a little plastic cup into the machine, then place a mug into a slot. “It’s not that Rey would rather die, not really—it’s that she doesn’t want to lose her grief.”

  I imagine unlocking the place where Pablo still lives in my heart and letting all that grief out. I can’t. It would kill me. But if I could give it to someone else? Not feel it or only a little? I don’t know what I would do.

  “What happened to her?” Gabi asks. I feel a little foolish that it didn’t occur to me to ask the same question.

  Indranie hesitates. “She—it was an explosion. She was at a concert. Many people died. Rey survived. But her brother did not.”

  My face becomes numb as the blood leaves it, racing to my heart.

  Gabi faces me. “She had a brother like us.” Under the table, she squeezes my hand hard.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And he died too,” she says.

  “Yes,” I repeat, wishing she would stop talking. Stop telling our secrets.

  “I know,” Indranie says. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Marisol and Pablo were best friends,” Gabi says.

  Indranie looks carefully at me, judging something. She’s already drunk the coffee in her mug and begins the process of making more. “Marisol, we thought maybe you could talk to Rey. You understand the pain she’s going through. You can relate to her. If you could convince her to wear the cuff, she has a chance of getting better.”

  I want to laugh. She was wild, beautiful, and destructive. How could I relate to her in any way?

  “What happens if I can’t get her to agree?”

  Indranie gulps her coffee like it’s air. She scoops up our empty glasses of juice and takes them to the sink. She doesn’t turn back to face us.

  “Then the experiment is over.”

  Indranie won’t say it because she doesn’t want to scare Gabi. Or maybe because she feels pity for me, for both of us. But I can read it in her voice. If the experiment fails, there is no reason for us to stay. We will be sent home.

  Chapter 10

  The water is as warm as a bath. I hold myself under, surrounded by silence, as long as I can before coming up for air. The first sound I hear is Gabi’s laughter.

  “Sol! Watch me!”

  I swim over to where she’s practicing underwater handstands.

  “Very good, pececito,” I say when she comes up for air. She’s always been good in the water. Pablo and I used to marvel at how things were easy for Gabi, her personality more sunshine than darkness.

  Gabi laughs at me, and the sound echoes through the enclosed pool. When I try to shush her, she scowls.

  “There’s no one else to hear us, silly.”

  “I know. But still.”

  The pool is inside a building with glass walls and tile floors separate from the carriage house. “The pool house,” Olga said when I asked where the pool was. There are so many houses here, houses for objects.

  “You girls really should have suits of your own,” Indranie says when we come back from our swim. Now that Gabi’s suit is wet, it is nearly falling off her. “How about I take you shopping?”

  “Aren’t you busy? Working or doing things at home?” Gabi asks. I bump her with my hip. She shouldn’t be asking personal questions.

  “You two are my number one priority, my DIY project, and my homework assignment all rolled into one,” she says.

  We look at her, not understanding.

  “I mean, there’s nowhere I’d rather be. Come on, let’s go hit the mall.”

  * * *

  The mall looks exactly like the ones on Cedar Hollow, with lots of American s
tores lined up on both sides like boxes of jewels.

  “Pretty great, right, Gabi?” I nudge her when she doesn’t respond. She must be tired. She was excited to get a new blue-and-white bathing suit. Thrilled when Indranie took us to Starbucks. But now she is dragging her feet.

  “It’s not as big as Galerías.” Gabi shrugs.

  We stop at several more stores, following Indranie closely so we don’t get lost. Gabi stops suddenly at a store with shoes and boots in the window.

  “What?” Indranie asks, peering in the window too.

  “Those boots,” Gabi says dreamily. “Perfect for una moto.”

  I tsk, sounding like Mamá. “Which you don’t have. You don’t need boots.” I pull her by the arm to the next store.

  “What’s a moto?” Indranie asks.

  “Una motocicleta. A motorcycle,” Gabi answers. “My favorite is a Ducati Panigale V4. It’s the fastest, and Ducati are the best—they’re Italian.”

  “I had no idea you were such a speed demon, Gabi!” Indranie says, pretending shock. “How do you know so much about motorcycles? Did your brother have one?”

  The excited light in Gabi’s eyes dims, then goes out.

  “No, of course not. Who could afford such a thing?” I say. “We had a friend in Colonia Escalón who liked cars and motos. He showed Gabi all his favorites.”

  “That’s pretty cool.”

  “I like to go fast,” my sister says, not meeting Indranie’s gaze. “I like when the wind is so strong that tears sting your eyes.”

  Next to the boot shop is a stationery store, and Indranie stops to look inside. Gabi walks back to the motorcycle boots, putting her face as close to the glass as she can without touching it. I begin to wonder. What if we walked away? How could they find us? I know where we are now is so much better than where we were, but the impulse, the push to run is still in me. I wonder if it’s in Gabi too.

  Indranie is looking at cards at the back of the stationery store.