by Susana Aikin
The only woman to have crossed the line had been Olga Morris, who had made herself fit snugly, first in his work environment, and later in the house. Initially, all kinds of speculation went on about a possible affair between them, but since nothing was confirmed down the line, the gossip died down. Despite the fact that she stayed glued to him while she lasted.
The morning after Alina’s arrest, we found out that Olga Morris had disappeared from Madrid leaving no trace. Further inquiries conducted in the bank where the checks had been cashed confirmed it had been her who presented the checks, had them ratified by the branch manager, and carried away the money. Because she’d been Father’s head secretary and business administrator, the bank was used to dealing with her directly, and although surprised by the large amounts that were being cashed, it was assumed to be another one of Father’s dynamic business transactions, and no further questions were asked.
Olga Morris was arrested three days later in Marbella, a millionaire vacation town in the south of Spain, totally drunk in a luxury hotel room and surrounded by the pile of sleeping pills she was probably intending to take. The money, save for a few thousand in her book bag, was missing. When interrogated, she refused to talk. The routine medical examination during her arrest revealed terminal breast cancer, which she admitted to having known about for the last eight months. After Father dropped charges, she was deported back to the States. The investigation to track down the money took a long time to arrive at conclusions. Long enough that I had most of it figured out before any official statement was issued. Sometimes the intuitive human heart is faster than police proceedings.
Weeks after she was deported, when looking around the desk she had occupied in the library, I found her old yellow leather purse in one of the drawers, the only personal item she left behind. Inside one of the plastic sleeves, there was a picture of a small boy with a narrow face, sad eyes, and limp straw hair. I then remembered her mentioning the young son she had sent to her mother in Rockhill, South Carolina, after her divorce, because she couldn’t afford to keep him with her. That instant I knew why she had taken the money and its probable whereabouts. The realization hit me like a lightning bolt, and then shame washed over me because of the fact that we had never, not even once, called her just Olga.
How much of this did Father know? Was he more involved than he admitted? That afternoon, weeks after the mayhem had finally quieted down and he and I were the only ones left in the house, I sat across from his desk in his studio and decided to ask him directly.
“Was there something between you and Olga that we didn’t know about?” I was surprised at how adult I sounded. Not just how bold, but also how much I came across as an equal. There I was, only nineteen years old and questioning my father about his misdemeanors. But then, at that strange moment, we were equals; like some unlikely pair that ends up cast away after a shipwreck, and become comrades-in-arms facing the calamity. So, yes, I had stepped up to a certain equality, and was determined to make use of it.
“Did you and she . . . ?” I repeated the question.
“That’s neither here nor there,” Father said sternly, but then he added in a softer tone, “but if you must know, no, not really, no, I couldn’t say there was—” He faltered and then averted his eyes. In this gesture I saw not just the mortification he felt about the appearance of his relationship to Olga Morris, but also detected a sort of tenderness toward her, a trace of affection, something that surprised and shocked me.
“So, why are you dropping charges then?” I asked with a harsher voice than I had intended. All of a sudden I was furious at the thought of this scrawny, blond drunk having taken advantage of my father.
“It’s complicated,” he said, returning his eyes to mine. “Olga is a poor woman abandoned in a foreign country in total indigence by a ruthless husband,” he added, and hesitated to go on while I waited.
“And . . . ?”
“And there’s the cancer,” he added.
“Did you know about it?”
“Yes.”
We looked at each other in silence.
Spring was early that year. Outside the window, the untrimmed lilac bushes pressed their soft mauve blooms against the panes, and golden shafts of afternoon sunlight fell onto Father’s back, silhouetting his head and shoulders against the wood paneling behind him. For the first time I noticed the lines on his forehead and around his eyes, his hair graying along the sideburns, and realized that Father was beginning to age.
Many times I have thought back on this moment, the first time I saw a glitch in his otherwise hard-hearted appearance, the beginning of a seemingly commensurate platform between us. In my innocence I had thought I was stepping into a protective role toward him. But there was no being at the same level with Father; he always needed to ride on top of things.
Only days earlier he had again played the callous, brutal role we were used to. And this time around, the consequences struck deeper and faster than ever before.
Alina had spent the night under arrest in the police station, crammed into an overnight holding cell with prostitutes, drug dealers, and other poor street wretches. Not that she might have been intimidated by this type of population, she was a tough cookie and probably organized the group into some sort of protest or riot just a few hours into the arrest. She was released the next day when the police investigation was redirected to Olga Morris. After that she didn’t just not return to the house, but refused to see or to talk to Julia again. She had had it with our family. Her cousin Camila, a short girl with oversized hips and carrot-colored hair, scoffed when she came over to pick up her belongings. Fascistas de mierda. Fucking fascists.
Julia was beside herself. She couldn’t understand why Alina was rejecting her as if she had had anything to do with her arrest. She’d fought with the policemen who handcuffed her, and had refused to let go of Alina when they dragged her into the police van. She became such a problem that Father was told that if he didn’t control her, she would have to be taken in too.
That night she stormed into Father’s study screaming, demanding to know how the hell he could even doubt Alina’s innocence. When Father retorted it had been the detective’s conclusion and not his, she was overcome with rage. “No, you had nothing to do with it! I know you, you cunning bastard! I’m sure you drove them directly toward that conclusion!” Father was chilled at her fury, and so was I. No one had ever attacked Father like this.
“I hate you!” she said in a horribly hoarse voice. “I never want to see you again, I’d rather sleep on the street, I’d rather whore myself than eat at your table.” This was not the Julia we knew. This was a ferocious animal prepared to tear her enemy apart. Her brazenness triggered Father’s wrath and I could see his body swelling with violent might. He stood up.
“You dare talk like that in my house and you’re out!” he said, and I thought he was going to lunge at her. I jumped in between them and covered Julia’s body with mine. The three of us held our stances in tension, watching one another and panting.
“Get out! Right now!” Father snarled.
“If you throw her out, I’m going too,” I said, trying to sound calm, although my legs were about to cave under me. Father glowered at me, eyes burning with rage. Then he turned around and left the room.
Julia fell to her knees and vomited on the floor. Then she burst into sobs. Later, it took all my convincing skills to talk her out of going to the police station and camping outside for the night. For the first time in over a year, I slept again in our old room, close to Julia, who couldn’t stop crying.
It was only the beginning of the nightmare. Alina’s release from arrest marked the starting point of an intense rejection and smear campaign against Julia in the art school. Alina wouldn’t talk to Julia, wouldn’t even acknowledge her presence. People would start whispering when she walked into rooms. Julia became angst-ridden and restless. She stopped eating, couldn’t sleep, started talking about dropping out of school.
&nb
sp; “Can’t you talk to her, tell her you had nothing to do with it?” I kept asking, incredulous of Alina’s vengeful persistence.
“It’s impossible to have a conversation with her. Every time I approach, she walks away,” was Julia’s answer.
“Can’t you ask some mutual friend to mediate, to talk on your behalf?”
“I don’t have anyone like that.”
“What about that woman, Mananas? Remember you told me how she thought you were the greatest couple?”
“I wouldn’t know where to find Mananas.”
“Didn’t she work in that bar, El Mojito, as a waitress?”
“What would I do, just walk in and say what? I only met her once.”
“Julia, you need to do something. I’ll come with you, if that’s what it takes.”
Julia perked up. “Would you?” It was the first time in days I had seen a flicker of light in her eyes.
That night we set out for El Mojito. We drove into town in Marion’s burgundy Seat 600, which I had inherited after she moved to London. It had rained in the early evening and the cobbled streets of the older part of town glistened under the dim streetlights. It was after ten p.m. on a Monday, so most of the downtown appeared to be empty, save a few local bars where a handful of male patrons drank beer and watched replays of a soccer match. El Mojito, one of the scarce lesbian bars at that time in Madrid, was located in a narrow street in Chueca, a down-and-out neighborhood inhabited by older working-class denizens and a few Moroccan and Latin American immigrants. A decade or so later it would bloom into a cool ’hood gentrified by artists and young professionals, among which I would eventually count myself. But for now, Chueca was just a grimy, shabby-looking quarter, littered with garbage piles, its intricate network of dark, cramped streets running into each other in unpredictable ways. From the open windows and balconies above wafted pungent waves of cooking smells into the street, and the sounds of all sorts of family discussions and fights poured down below for everyone to hear. But not tonight. Monday was a hard fall after a long weekend of late carousing, and the neighborhood lay in a quiet slumber.
The entrance to El Mojito was a dark little door that first led into a sort of large corridor, to one side of which was a bar, backlit with a red glow; and then opened farther along into a roundish cave-like space with tables around a small, round dance floor. A swirling disco ball shot revolving shafts of color onto the walls; everything else was more or less in darkness, save for some candles on the tables. As we crossed the threshold, I was hit by a strong smell, a combination of alcohol and the dampened wood of old, dirty bars. Then there was the cigarette smoke that rose and curled up toward the domed ceiling. Everyone still smoked back then. It was considered cool and sexy. Julia and I were exceptions in that we had never been interested in the habit.
El Mojito was mostly empty, maybe a dozen women hanging around between the bar and the back room. Many of them were masculine looking, with short, cropped hair, and dressed in dark slacks and shirts with silver chains and bracelets as adornments, as was the lesbian fashion then. Everyone turned heads to check us out. The place was probably more of a membership type of hangout than an open bar, in the sense that new faces were the exception. I was glad we’d decided to wear jeans and plain tops. I would have felt even more singled out if we had dressed in girlie garb. We walked up to the bar.
“I’m looking for Mananas,” said Julia.
The woman behind the bar, a large female with short black hair plastered with gel toward the back of her head, said, “That’s me. How can I help you?” The bored expression on her face seemed to freeze Julia for a moment. Mananas waited for an answer, eyeing us wearily while drying a set of tall glasses with a cloth.
“I’m Alina’s friend.” Julia hesitated. “We met once, don’t you remember?”
“Sorry, I don’t; too many people come by every day.” Mananas forced a little smile and held it for a beat. “As for Alina, she doesn’t come around no more. Haven’t seen her for months.” She turned her back to us, and started replacing the dried cups on the shelf with extreme care. Julia and I stood, not knowing what to do next.
“Let’s leave,” Julia whispered.
“Are you kidding? Came all the way here, and leave just like that? I’m not sure I trust her.” Then, turning to the bar, I said to Mananas, “Can we have two mojitos, then?” and drove Julia toward one of the tables. Mananas took a while to bring over the two fat glasses glazed with rum and lime, on the rocks, squashed mint leaves floating on top.
When I went to pay, she said in a half yawn, “Pay me later, when you’re all finished.”
No sooner had we settled down and started to sip our mojitos than there was a bustling at the door and a group of women entered the bar, boisterous with laughter and loud talk. The space became energized in an instant as the music changed from the Santana album that had been playing to a loud mambo orchestra. The raucous group moved into the back with drinks and settled among tables and chairs.
“There she is!” Julia’s voice trembled. “I shouldn’t have come. I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
Alina stood across the room with the group of newcomers. Although she didn’t glance directly at us, I knew she was aware of our presence because as she stepped onto the dance floor, she began to take off her jacket making sure her body was turned in our direction, as if she were on a stage. She was dressed in khaki fatigues, the type used by the Spanish military, and a tight cream T-shirt that showed off her round breasts and slim waist. She chatted away and laughed loudly, and I knew Alina well enough to understand that she was warming up toward putting on a good show.
Meanwhile, maracas, cowbells, and conga drums interspersed with sax and trombone, electrifying sounds, filled the space with irresistible rhythm. I could feel the mambo beat throbbing stronger with every sip of my mojito. It pulsed inside my ears and along my veins. Julia was also drinking fast beside me. I ordered more drinks.
A group of women was already on the dance floor. They kicked and flicked their feet and swayed their hips to the music in wide, exaggerated movements. Then Alina walked into the middle holding hands with a partner, a tall, athletic woman with thick sensual lips and a short hairdo ending in a pigtail that curled on her shoulder. They turned to each other and began to dance, shaking their hips and stepping to the sides and backward. Because Alina was dressed in lighter colors and danced under the shaft of lights, she seemed to fill the floor. Her small, round body moved with a sensuality quite beyond what I had seen in her before. She danced in total abandonment, swinging her hips in flowing motion while her feet performed quick, sharp steps hardly touching the floor. Her olive skin glistened with beads of sweat pouring from her forehead toward her lips and downward from her underarms, moistening her T-shirt along the belly and under her breasts. Now and then she pulled her partner to her and rubbed her body lustily against hers, or brushed her cheek against her partner’s open mouth.
Maybe it was the mojitos, but I felt my mind zooming in to her sensual curves, homing in on the perfect shape of her earlobes perforated with tiny diamond studs, inside the depths of her dark amber glance, seductive and jeering all in one. And for the first time I understood why Julia was so taken with her, why she had fallen into her irresistible magnetic field, how she could love her curvy, graceful body all night long. I turned to see Julia, red-faced and hollow-eyed, staring at Alina in a trance. And Alina was not just staring back, she was dancing for Julia alone. For a moment the room belonged to them, to their eyes locked in a harrowing, passionate glance, to Alina’s body unfolding into waves of dripping desire, for Julia’s parched mouth alone.
The song ended and the music mellowed down. Alina stood facing us. I thought she would come to our table and talk to Julia. But all of a sudden she turned to her dancing partner, took her face in her hands, and gave her a long, wet kiss. The other women on the floor cheered and clapped. Julia got up abruptly, her chair fell back and the mojito glasses that were on the tabl
e crashed on the floor. She was trembling. Everyone’s eyes turned in our direction.
“Look who’s left her rich daddy’s closet to come and throw things around!” Alina taunted in a shrill voice.
“I had nothing to do with what happened. Please, you need to believe me,” Julia pleaded in a broken voice.
“I don’t have to believe anything. You’re all chips off the old block. Hypocrites and Nazis.”
“You don’t mean this, you don’t mean anything you’re saying.”
“Yes, I do. Beat it, bollera de armario, closet dyke, before I chase you out.” Alina stuck out her tongue, then turned to her girlfriend and kissed her again. “I’ll let you know that my new girlfriend is a policewoman. That’s what it takes for a girl to be safe these days,” she sneered, and turning around took a baton from the table behind her and flaunted it toward us under the light. Again, knowing Alina, it was hard to discern if it was a prop, or a real piece of her girlfriend’s professional gear.
Meanwhile, Mananas, who was picking up the broken glass around us, whispered, “Why don’t you all go away? It’s not looking good.”
“You knew who we were, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Why did you pretend you didn’t?”
“I was trying to drive you away, guessing what might be coming. And now, just get your sister out of here! I know how these bitch dykes can smash things up.”
It was easy to lead Julia away, since she was in total shock. I held her by the arm and walked her out of El Mojito to the car. As we passed by the bar, Mananas leaned toward us and said, “Hey, don’t take it so hard, she’s mad now. You just need to give her time.”
At that moment, I was grateful for the hope she was giving Julia, who stood shaking by my side. But over the years I have grown to resent her words and wished she had never uttered them, because that’s precisely what Julia has been giving Alina all along. Time. And with that gift Julia has pawned the best years of her life.
