I don’t know how much time went by. Maybe two years, maybe three. I know that I was no longer an adolescent but a young woman. One client that they called “El Oso” started showing up. They said he was a womanizer, that he liked them all, but, after being with me twice, he wasn’t with any of the other girls ever again. He was a little gruff, but he didn’t treat me badly, and since he knew they didn’t give me hardly any cash, sometimes he’d bring me a little gift—chocolates, some perfume—or he’d give me a small bill and say, “Hide this well. This is just for you.”
The truth is that I didn’t have any way to spend it because they rarely let us out. One day El Oso kept looking at me and told me: “Wait, I know who you are.”
I didn’t remember having seen him before I went to Madame’s house but after a few weeks, one day he remembered: “Didn’t you used to live in Puerto Rico?”
It turned out that he worked as an expert in falsifying documents, and he was the one that had made the papers for us girls when the guy bought us, and, from that time on, I was certain that’s what had happened.
Well, I don’t know if El Oso was capable of falling in love, but he was growing fond of me and, why would I lie to you, I felt the same. I don’t know what kind of deal he made with the owner of the place or with the Madame, but one night he brought me a dress and some shoes and said, “Get dressed, you’re getting out of here.”
Within a few days we moved to Miami. The early days weren’t bad. He concentrated on his scams, I took care of the house—well, trailer—where we lived, and I can tell you that compared to the earlier years of my life, this part was almost happy. I really wanted to have a child, but he refused, saying that we had to travel light, that he wasn’t a family man, and that I shouldn’t get my hopes up.
I admit that I tricked him. You know that us women have a way of arranging those things. Finally I got pregnant. I thought that now in that situation he’d be happy or, at least, he’d accept it. None of that. He got pissed and took me almost by force to a clinic where they gave me such a back alley abortion that later I wound up with a terrible infection. I thought I was going to die. One night a neighbor lady saw me so badly off that she called 911. They had to do an emergency operation. They said that after that I would never be able to have children.
I’m telling you these things that I’d like to forget and had hoped you’d never find out because my wish is that they’ll make you understand better what happened later. I became very depressed. Nothing mattered to me. Even he didn’t care to fight with me like before. At night, he’d get cleaned up and he’d go out alone. Shortly thereafter the incidents at the Peruvian Embassy in Havana took place and Cubans started leaving through Mariel. That’s when I found out that he was from Cuba because up until then I’d believed he was Boricua, although I don’t know why I thought he was from Puerto Rico, since he didn’t talk like me.
One day he told me that we were going to work together and make a lot of money. I froze. I thought he was going to force me back into prostitution and I couldn’t have handled it. But that wasn’t the case. He took me with him to Tamiami Park, where there were many refugees and a lot of confusion. He told me my job was to get close to the families and to make friends with the children and the women, and to find out what worried them the most. Then I was supposed to report back to him and then introduce him to the ones he chose. I could write a book about the stories I heard, but El Oso only wanted to meet the people that had something to hide or needed some document they’d not been able to bring with them. So I’d gain their confidence, and he’d falsify their documents. Many didn’t have any way to pay him, but he got their relatives to do it. When they didn’t have any family, he always said: “Don’t worry about it, chico, we’ll figure out a way for you to pay me later.”
The truth is, some of them benefitted from the situation and settled up with him. When they finally closed Tamiami Park, we left for Fort Chaffee. I don’t know how he snuck in so that we could work there as volunteers but soon we were doing the same thing. It was harder there because few had relatives in the United States or they hadn’t been able to locate them, but he was able to gather information from reports. Those refugees assimilated to life in the United States and, in one way or another, he would collect.
Now, mijita, here comes the hardest part where you and your father come in. His name was Alberto Gonzalez and he came to the United States through Mariel at age seventeen. However, in order to get out of Tamiami without problems, you needed to be eighteen. El Oso assured him that he could arrange it, and your father, who was just a kid, not suspecting anything, was thrilled. He got him a birth certificate, which showed him one or two years older and a social security number belonging to a man who had died. Later it turned out that your father found a great uncle who got him out of there and gave him a job. Maybe he wouldn’t have needed those papers and his life would’ve been different, if he had found him earlier…
Truth be told, with that art of falsifying documents and the quantity of people who came through Mariel, we lived well for a few years. But that had its limits. I thought that El Oso would also be able to do the same thing with, for example, the Nicaraguans, but somehow it was harder for him to falsify their documents, and that didn’t work out. Later I thought that he might have some connections with the Cuban government… I couldn’t believe that he was even able to get a Marielito writer a copy of his novel that the Cuban State Security forces had confiscated. Maybe he was even one of Castro’s agents, but at that time it didn’t occur to me.
As he earned less, he became nastier. The truth is he was flat broke. I was already pretty resentful of him because he forced me to get an abortion and it was his fault that I couldn’t have kids, but the thing is that he’d never really valued me just for who I was. My documents were false and I didn’t know how to escape. So I began watching him work with the idea that one day I could make my own papers and begin a new life.
It was in that period that El Oso began blackmailing those who’d never paid him. Even if they had paid, they were living with false documents that could get them deported to Cuba if they were discovered by Immigration, or at least that’s what he told them.
Among others, he began taking money from your father. Alberto was a good man, and, since he didn’t want to cause problems for his great uncle who had hired him, he started paying. At first, El Oso asked him for small sums and we’d meet up in a store in Miami Beach, and he’d give him the cash.
But El Oso was bad, and he knew how to squeeze people. He kept asking Alberto to help him rob his great uncle’s business. He refused for months until the pressure was so severe that he caved. It was obvious that your father felt very bad about betraying the very person who had helped him, but El Oso kept pressing him to rob his uncle’s house, in addition to the business. Your father moved from there and hid from us a while. I felt ashamed and I told El Oso to leave him alone, that there was no use beating a dead horse. He threatened him so much that Alberto gave in. Your father assured him that it was the last time because he didn’t have anything else to give him. The truth is that the whole thing was really ugly because even the poor old man wound up beaten.
For some time, I think for about a year, Alberto stayed somewhat underground and El Oso found other victims and left him alone for a while. One day, I don’t remember how, we found out that Alberto had gotten married and he’d just had a son…or a daughter.
“When you have a family, you do anything to protect it. This guy isn’t going to want them finding out that he’s been using a false social security number for twelve years. He could go to jail,” El Oso said.
Finally he found him. Then came Hurricane Andrew. I insisted that El Oso leave him alone because the poor guy didn’t have a penny to his name.
“Everybody has something,” he said.
He arranged to meet him a few days after Andrew near the house where we lived at the time near K
rome Avenue. Your father brought two hundred dollars and said: “This is all I have. I beg you to leave me alone or I’m going to turn you in to the police. I don’t care anymore what happens to me. I have a wife and a daughter now. I can’t keep living like this.”
They got into it. El Oso punched him and Alberto fell backwards and hit his head on a brick. At least that’s what El Oso told me because I was inside the house and I didn’t see it. He put him in the car that Alberto had driven and he came running into the house, gave me the keys and said: “Come on, run, follow me.”
I followed him to a grassy area near a canal. I saw that he put Alberto in the driver’s seat and put it in drive so it would go into the canal. But it didn’t move. He called me over to help him.
When I got closer, I saw that there was a bag and a car seat in the back. Without thinking, in the blink of an eye, I opened the door, removed the bag, and I saw you. I don’t know how I was able to unbuckle the little seatbelt that was holding you. Then the car started moving forward. I threw myself on the ground with you and the bag between my arms. I heard El Oso close the door just before it fell into the water, and he yelled at me: “Holy shit, Soledad. What have you done?”
Chapter 30
Day 38—Wednesday, December 9, 2015
“Excuse me,” Maria told Smith breaking the absolute silence that the three of them had shared. “I have to go to the ladies’ room for a second and need a bottle of water.” She handed him the letter.
“Hang on to this while I go.”
“No problem. I’ll go get us some water.”
Like Maria, Fernandez took advantage of the moment to stretch and go to the restroom. He crossed paths with her on the way, but they didn’t speak. The mysteries were becoming clear, and many of the things they’d learned were being confirmed, but reading it in the words of a woman condemned to death in some way added a human element that was very different from the cold police reports.
Moments later, without so much as a word spoken among the three of them, Smith handed them the papers again. This second part began with different colored ink.
Beloved Mijita, I had to stop writing for a few days. You know how depressed I get after those treatments. Sometimes, I feel like I’d rather die, and I’m not exaggerating because I know that’s going to happen anyway. I think that you’ll be more at peace if you think that you’ve done everything possible to save me, at least until you read this confession. I know your kindness and your love for me and that’s why it scares me so much to write all of this down for you. I keep writing, not knowing whether I’ll tear up this letter in the end, but I think that at least I owe you the truth, even if you hate me for the rest of your life. I would deserve it.
So, let’s get back to where I was in this long and tangled story of our lives together. El Oso went crazy when I took you out of the car. He tried to snatch you out of my arms and throw you into the canal. I was holding you tight and told him not to be stupid, that if he did, you’d float up and they’d discover the crime.
“Ok, then we’ll go get some weights to put on her… Have you gone nuts?” he yelled.
I told him that it was his fault that I couldn’t have children and asked him to let me raise you. I thought we could be a family. You were crying, and he was afraid we’d attract attention. He tried to rip you from my arms. Look, I am not very religious, but if there are miracles, at that moment God worked one. You stopped crying and, just like that, the tiny little thing that you were, maybe not even a month old, you smiled at him and that very bad man’s heart melted. I knew that we had won the battle when he pushed me toward the car saying, “Ok, let’s go home and we’ll see.”
We didn’t stay in Miami very long out of fear that they’d discover us. We drove almost nonstop the whole way to New Jersey where he had friends. I bought you diapers, bottles, milk, and a few clothes. I’d never taken care of a baby. You were a little angel. You drank up all the milk, the orange juice, and you hardly ever cried. I had to work extra hard to tend to El Oso to keep him from getting jealous. I also didn’t want you to bother him. He didn’t seem to show much interest, but he never spoke again about us getting rid of you and once, when he thought I wasn’t watching, he went up to you and smiled. If there was anything good in that man, I only saw it in his eyes when he looked at you.
You were probably about six months old when he came home with some papers.
“Check it out. I’ve made the baby a birth certificate. Someday she’ll have to go to school, and she’ll need it,” he said.
I breathed easily from that time on. There were some pretty good times. El Oso was no longer living from falsifying documents. Instead, he was selling drugs. I knew that it was wrong, but I tried not to think about that. You were my world. And I enjoyed watching you grow, your first tooth, your first words, your first steps, and the delight with which you ate bananas, which you loved. I begged him not to ever bring drugs home, and I’m almost sure that he listened to me. At least, I never saw anything in that tiny little apartment that we had in Queens.
I think you were about a year and a half old, more or less, when one day, all of a sudden, he told me that things weren’t going well, and I needed to get a job. No matter how many times I asked, he never spoke frankly; everything was a constant fight. He gave me a piece of paper with a name and address.
“Look, this friend of mine has a factory and he’s looking for help,” he said.
“But I don’t know how to do anything,” I explained.
He insisted: “You’re smart. They’ll teach you.”
I kept resisting: “Look genius, and the baby?”
“She’s bigger now. We’ll find someone to take care of her,” he replied.
My objections fell on deaf ears. Besides, I thought that as soon as they saw that I didn’t have any work experience, they weren’t going to hire me. I was wrong. Now I think that he had it all arranged. Besides, I didn’t think that things were going so badly for him, and the little bit that I was going to make there wasn’t going to help us much.
Those were hard years, especially the winters. I would get up early to take you to Odalys’s house, a marvelous woman who grew very fond of you. Then I’d take I don’t know how many trains or buses to get to the factory. There I was, sitting for eight hours in front of a sewing machine. They barely gave us a fifteen-minute break in the mornings, and fifteen in the afternoon, and thirty for lunch. Only two good things happened during those days. I made very good friends and, with what I learned, I began making you some adorable outfits. I even dreamed that someday I’d make your wedding gown.
Now, I think that my love for you made me egotistical. I never thought about your real mother or how much she must’ve suffered thinking that you had drowned in the canal. I felt like your savior and your mother, and I didn’t allow anything to get in my way.
Not too many months had gone by before the boss started sending me on errands that struck me as odd. Sometimes he’d call me to the office and say, “Soledad, when you come this way tomorrow, would you mind stopping for a second at the bodega on the corner? They’re going to give you a package for me. Stick it in your purse and bring it to me when you get here.”
Since I must’ve had a surprised look on my face, he added: “They’re some special threads that I ordered.”
Each time the errands became more frequent and occasionally I had to switch trains or buses.
“Don’t worry if you get here a little late,” he said to calm me down.
The other girls, however, didn’t like that sometimes I clocked in an hour later even though, as far as I knew, they weren’t aware of the boss’s errands or that they weren’t deducting that time from my pay. Actually, they’d raised my salary.
El Oso was on cloud nine. On Sundays, the three of us would go out and there were moments when it seemed like we were just like any other family. At times I felt nervous altho
ugh I didn’t understand exactly the mess that I was getting into.
I found out a few weeks later. On one of our Sunday outings, seemingly by chance, we ran into the owner of a little shop where I’d pick up packages frequently for the boss. He and El Oso greeted each other with an embrace. It was all very fast and I wouldn’t have suspected anything if it hadn’t had been that all of a sudden I realized that you had a doll in your hands that I’d never seen before. I figured that you’d taken it from another girl in the park, although you usually didn’t do things like that. I scolded you and you began crying. El Oso intervened: “Come on, Soledad, leave the poor girl alone.”
When you calmed down and stopped crying, you looked at me with those big beautiful eyes of yours and said, “I didn’t steal the doll, Mami. El Oso’s friend gave it to me.” You called him that because he never wanted you to call him Papá.
“Of course, Soledad, that guy is one of my pals. Don’t give the girl a hard time,” he said, defending you.
I felt a shiver go down my spine. There was something fishy going on. Immediately the sunny Sunday turned gray. We returned home in silence.
Maybe I was wrong to confront him, I don’t know. That night I asked him to tell me the truth: what did he have to do with those packages that I was picking up for the boss, who was that man we ran into, and why had he given you a doll? At first he started ignoring me, paying me no mind, until he finally explained: “I would have preferred that you didn’t know but since you’re bugging me so much I’ll tell you. I really don’t know how you didn’t figure it out sooner. They’re drugs, Soledad, and now you’re up to your ass deep in it with me so don’t even think about going against me, blabbing a word to anyone, or not doing what the boss says. Up to now you’ve been pretty good.”
I couldn’t sleep a wink. How could I have been such a dumbass? My world came crashing down. I, the one who lived to protect you, who worried when you’d scrape a knee or if you didn’t eat right on any given night, had put the two of us in the middle of drug trafficking! Of course, nothing would’ve happened to you, but if they had found out the truth about me, I would’ve gone to jail. I would’ve had to tell the truth so they could’ve found your real mother because I wasn’t going to let them give you to just any old family, and I figured I’d never get out of jail. Those thoughts tormented me.
The Miracle of Saint Lazarus Page 16
