Lawyers here in Boston, I assume you mean. Did Zoila come up here right after she broke up with the warden?
No, after she broke up with the warden, Zoila went back to the house she shared with her friend, says María. A few days later, Zoila was going to work when she was kidnapped and taken back to the warden’s house, and locked in a storage room with just a little foam mattress on the floor. The story María now begins to almost race through is horrifying but familiar, even inevitable. Two men wearing ski masks came regularly into the storage room to demand that Zoila tell them what she’d overheard Capitán Psycho-Sadist and the warden discussing and also everything else she knew about the capitán’s prison dealings and about Cara de Culo’s role. They also demanded to know who she’d spoken to about it. They were sure she’d at least told her friend she’d shared the house with. Zoila insisted she’d only overheard that one conversation and that of course she hadn’t told anybody. The men didn’t believe her. They came into the room every day to shout at her. They beat her and called her a liar. The geese were always noisy in the mornings. Whenever Zoila heard their uproar after hours of quiet, says María, she thought another morning had arrived and that soon the daily torture sessions would begin again. The warden came into the storage room too. By then she was too weak even to sit up, but he kneeled by the mattress and begged her to tell the masked men what they wanted to know so they could be left alone. He promised he would stop being a warden. They would go live somewhere faraway and peaceful, maybe Switzerland, and they would be married and he would love her forever. Zoila’s friend, her housemate, was murdered; the masked men showed her a newspaper clipping. Now María draws a deep breath, exhales, and says gravely: They did the worst things bad men can do to Zoila, and she became ill and almost died. She woke up in a clinic. By her bed was standing the warden, the warden’s mother, and some men she didn’t know. Do you know who the warden’s mother is, Frankie?
No, María, I don’t, I say.
She is Matilda Ercolano Garay.
The woman Cara de Culo picked to be his vice president. I say, Ah, now I’m beginning to see. Though really, I’m looking into a tunnel of fog. I’ve heard Matilda Ercolano is the married general’s lover. I’ve heard but don’t mention now that her late father, the owner of a construction company and a former congressman from the Petén, had a hand in many of the country’s dirtiest businesses and that his family still does.
Yes, the future vice president, says María. But this was three years ago, when this happened in the clinic. Nobody had heard of that woman yet. The warden’s mother said to Zoila: You are alive because of me, because I intervened, and she told Zoila that if she promised to keep everything she knew a secret and went home with her son the warden and let him take care of her, and if he was good to her and she was good to him, then nothing would happen to them. Zoila obeyed, or pretended to obey, but a few weeks later, she somehow escaped. She came here to Boston, to Chelsea, to live with her cousin and to work as a housekeeper. Last year her cousin’s husband, a puertorriqueño, tried again to molest her, Frankie. Do you understand? Yes, many times, he wanted to, but this time was different. Zoila was so angry and frightened she told her cousin about it, and the husband, for revenge, called ICE, and she was put in deportation proceedings with an electric bracelet on her ankle. This is when she came to speak with Padre Rolando. I told the padre that of course I believed Zoila’s story and that the church should help her. Now with her lawyer, Padre Rolando told me, Zoila is asking for a stay of deportation and asylum. So good, now Zoila will be safe, I thought. But, then, only a week and some days ago, who do you think came to Boston to corner Zoila in the parking lot outside the supermarket where she went to shop? Came to tell her that in Guatemala they know that she is talking to lawyers. Who do you think, Frankie?
I don’t know, I said.
This is what Padre Rolando told me. It is very confidential, okay. I know you understand, Frankie. They showed Zoila pictures on a phone of her two sisters, her parents, her sister’s children. They said, Now you know we can get you and your family, Zoila, so of course you will not tell any lawyer about the general, the captain, or the warden. When you have your asylum hearing, we will have someone there in the courtroom to listen to what you say.
In a supermarket parking lot here in Boston? Who was it?
Matilda Ercolano Garay. And some men from Guatemala. This is what she told Padre Rolando.
Wow, they really don’t want any of this to get out, do they?
The lawyer took Zoila away; she is hiding. I don’t know when I will see her again. But Frankie, you have to write about this.
María, I would need to speak to Zoila or at least to her lawyer. And verify as much of the story as I could. And I would need Zoila’s permission.
Please, Frankie, I think you can help stop this criminal general from being president. María puts her hands out as if to take hold of mine, but then pulls them back.
I’ll try, María. I promise. Could you tell Padre Rolando I want to speak to him? Maybe he can put me in touch with Zoila’s lawyer. That’s really the only way.
So much for the notion that being up here puts you beyond the reach of General Cara de Culo and Capitán Psycho-Sadist.
Back when she left our house to marry Juan Camacho, María is telling me now, she was already pregnant. But Juan abandoned her, left her alone in their Boston apartment, which she couldn’t afford by herself. She worked as a daytime housecleaner for various families in the suburbs, taking long commutes by train and bus, with an infant, and that was so difficult. When el señor Alberto opened, she says, I was lucky that he hired me. Her son, Harry, graduated from East Boston High too. Then he joined the army and stayed in the service for twenty years. Harry was in a transport battalion in Afghanistan—he did three tours—and now he is out in San Diego and has his own trucking company. He does not like to come to Boston anymore, says María. But someday I will go out there to visit. I have never been to California, she says. Oh, I think you’ll love it out there, I tell her. But the truth is, I’ve never been to San Diego either, though I’ve been to Tijuana. I do like LA.
I’m standing beside María at a folding table as she sorts through heaped laundry. She says, One day el señor Alberto brought me the magazine with your article about our monseñor and the murder, and he said, María, isn’t this the boy you took care of? Could there be more than one Francisco Goldberg from Massachusetts and Guatemala? I was so surprised! Meanwhile María has formed two piles of socks, male and female, it looks like, and with deft snatches she’s bringing matching socks together, smoothing each out with a quick stroke of her hand, her fingers plucking dryer lint like feathers from baby chickens. She lays one sock over its pair to make a cross, folds, tucks, folds, the result is a perfect little sock package. She does this over and over, conversing all the time. There’s something uncanny valley about her hand movements, a true soft machine.
The last time I see Doña Yoli, she says, was I think ten years ago.
You saw her ten years ago?
A little more, I think. María tells me that it was at the Arlington Street Church, when she went to hear Penny Moore give a talk in the basement there. It was full, Frankie. So many people wanted to learn about Guatemala from this woman who is so brave, who knows so much.
Penny sure is exceptional, I say. She’s still a very dear friend of mine. You’re saying my mother was there?
Oh yes, Doña Yoli gave the introduction talk. She did not ever tell you this? She said, I am so proud to introduce my son’s friend Penny Moore.
I never knew about that. If my mother or Penny ever told me, I thought, it must have gone in one ear and out the other; the most likely explanation, I’m ashamed to admit, being that back then all I ever thought about was Gisela Palacios. Those years must all be a blur to Penny now, when that was what she did, traveling the country giving those talks night after night, day after day. Bu
t my mother, introducing Penny? Of course, in those years, Mamita was changing, evolving. She heard what people said about the wars in Central America in the college settings she worked in and at the Latin American Society, she read everything I published and she probably read beyond that, too, and she knew about Penny and her work. Mamita, you really did step up, didn’t you. But I didn’t know even the half of it, always nursing my resentment that it was only Lexi who absorbed all your attention. Yet there you were, without me even paying attention, showing your love in this devoted motherly way. Who would have foreseen then that in less than a decade you’d be in a nursing home?
My attention is snapped back to María, who is talking about her church book club. It is a small group, she says, five of us from our countries in Centroamérica, a señora from Peru. It was my suggestion we read Death Comes for the Bishop, she says. Our three guatemaltecas wanted to read your book to learn more about the murder of monseñor, our martyr for justice. Then Padre Blackett asked us what we think about a Jewish man writing this book about a Catholic bishop. Frankie, I was so surprised I had to speak. I said, But Padre, in the book Frankie wrote that he is Catholic, too, and was baptized in the same church where Monseñor was murdered. Father Blackett didn’t know this. Frankie, he hadn’t even read your book. And, imagine, he was leading the book club discussion and saying those things.
Well, even if I was only Jewish, María, I say as kindly as I can, that wouldn’t disqualify me from writing a book like that. Though María’s wrong. In the book I didn’t write that I’m “Catholic too,” only about having been baptized in that same church. Half-Catholic, does anyone ever call themselves that, does it even make any sense? I am half-Catholic. I half believe in Jesus Christ, our half savior. Thus this stigmata in only one hand.
Sometimes people are just surprised or jarred by a name like Goldberg in a Latin American context, I tell María.
You know, Frankie, María responds, when I came here, I didn’t know that Goldberg and Markowitz are Jewish names. I thought they are just names that are not like ours, American names like Smith and Brady. In our towns and villages, we never meet Jewish people, you know, and many people have ignorant ideas. So I was disappointed in Father Blackett.
Blackett. He’s Irish? I ask.
Yes, she says. But he is from Boston. But in our church we have priests who are latinoamericano too, like Padre Rolando.
He’s probably just very old-school Boston then, I say. Is he old?
I think around forty, she says.
Well, like I said, it happens all the time, people reacting like that, I tell María. But especially Americans, for some reason. One time in Mexico, after a book presentation, I was standing around talking to a couple of Mexican writers, Federico Campbell and my friend Martín when a gringa, a college student, I think, came and joined our conversation, a pretty girl in a T-shirt and skirt, long skinny legs stuck into a pair of clunky Doc Martens. She’d come to Mexico to take some literature courses, and she knew Martín. Everyone turned toward her, and Martín introduced us. This is Federico Campbell. Oh, mucho gusto, how do you do? And this is Francisco Goldberg. Goldberg!? this gringa squawked right into my face. That isn’t a Mexican name! Like she was accusing me of … accusing me of what, right? Why didn’t she react to Federico Campbell like that? Did she think Campbell is a Mexican name? Federico’s a lot whiter than me, by the way. He looks like Santa Claus without the beard. Oh well, so what. Like I said, I got wise to that sort of thing a long time ago. I try not to let it bother me.
María looks a little disconcerted, she probably hadn’t intended for her remark to set me off like that. Not that I’m even done thinking about it. So why wasn’t that girl’s idea of Mexicanness similarly offended or at least surprised by Federico’s surname? Because to someone like her, Campbell is a white-sounding name and white is the template. White can pass through walls. A Mexican with the surname Campbell won’t be suspected, in what seems a practically instinctual way, of trying to pull something off, of a dishonest or opportunistic appropriation. What could he possibly have to gain? But if my surname had been Olajuwon or even Mohammed, that girl would still have been taken aback, though not in that particular way. Maybe she would have thought Martín was making fun of her gringa gullibility. Oh yeah, Francisco Mohammed, sure, tell me another one. Father Blackett, on the other hand, was calling out what he saw as possibly an unscrupulous infringement. Good for María, standing up to him, almost like Mamita so long ago with Father Doyle.
María suddenly asks, What is Alexandra doing now, Frankie? Is she married? I tell her that Lexi is not married—no reason to mention the policeman—and that she’s living in New Bedford in a big Victorian house that she bought there.
Suddenly María looks alarmed, and she whispers, as if to herself: I almost forgot, and she gets up and walks back behind her counter again. I see Rebeca saying something to her, and María nods, sinks out of view, a moment later straightens up, and now she’s walking toward me with a big smile. When she reaches me, she holds out her hand, and in her palm there’s an arrowhead. It’s that arrowhead, isn’t it? Alright, what is this? What the hell is María doing with it? She puts the arrowhead in my hand. White quartz, flinted, lethally sharp. Of course it would seem a little smaller to me now than when I last held it, relinquishing it as I fell to the ground with my enraged father standing over me, lashing at my thighs with his belt. Well, Bert, it’s hard to hold that one against you, anyway.
A smile flickers at the corner of María’s lips. I say, That’s Lexi’s arrowhead, right? María nods, says, You recognize it. But now she has a slight look of worry, as if she’d expected me to whoop in overjoyed surprise, and she explains that Lexi had asked her to keep it safe, and so she’d put it into her bag where she kept spare buttons and other chunches, and that when she left our house, so distracted and worried, knowing she was already pregnant with Harry, she’d forgotten to give it back. Díos mio, she says, so many years have passed. Please, when you give this to Lexi, tell her I am sorry to not return it until now. But isn’t it nice, Frankie, that it is you who gives this to Lexi? Oh, I’m sure you and Lexi will laugh about it now. The sweetly hopeful look in María’s eyes so moves me that all my breath flutters out and I slump, but I rouse myself, smile, and say, Oh María, she is going to be so surprised.
Rebeca is going out for a soda and snack break, so María has to tend to customers again. I should have said goodbye to her when she left. Now it’s only polite that I wait until I can say goodbye to both. The first time I saw this arrowhead in Lexi’s hand, I’d immediately remembered reading about an arrow fired by a Wampanoag warrior from a distance of two hundred yards that went all the way through a Puritan militiaman and the woman he was out walking with, pinning both to the trunk of a tree, and I’d thought to myself, That arrowhead must have been just like this one. That’s what especially inflamed my covetousness, I think. I put it into my pocket and sit down to wait. The midafternoon sun, weakly breaking through the clouded-over sky, now seems to infuse the stucco façade across the street, making it glow tomatillo green. If María succeeds in helping me get in touch with Zoila, will I write something about her case? We’ll see. If she gives me permission, along with enough information so that I can dig into it a little bit more, sure I will. How could I refuse?
All my life, I’ve been answering some version of the inevitable question: But aren’t you Jewish? (Weren’t you just introduced to me as Frank Goldberg? Then what do you mean that you were baptized in that church?) I’m half-Jewish, I’ve always answered. Usually adding: My mother is Catholic. (I’m half-Jewish and half-Catholic, I’m sure I used to say as a boy.) Those questions always felt threatening to me; to some degree, they still do. When I answered like I did, did people think I was saying that I was or wasn’t Jewish? That’s what I’m thinking about, sitting here in this sleek hipster pub that I stopped into after saying goodbye to María and Rebeca at the laundromat and walking ar
ound the neighborhood a bit, fuming about Father Blackett, Lexi’s arrowhead in my pocket.
When I was a kid, I never would have dared to say out loud: I want to be just one thing, like a normal person is, though I thought it all the time. Having a mother from Guatemala is weird enough, but at least she’s Catholic. I’d rather be Catholic because that’s more normal. I did know there was some sort of rabbinical law that if the mother isn’t Jewish then her children aren’t either, but it wasn’t a law I ever saw enforced in any way, or that anyone else seemed to know or care about. As a child I did ask my mother to let me go to Sunday School at St. Joe’s. But Bert said, Yoli, they’ll slaughter him. He can’t defend himself against one Gary Sacco, what’s going to happen when every goddamned kid is Gary Sacco? Instead, I was put into after-school Hebrew classes. I don’t know how Bert didn’t foresee what a disaster that was going to be. When two weeks later I just stopped going, not a mote of dust was stirred by query or protest from any quarter.
I want to be nothing. Why can’t I just be nothing? What if I’d said that? But what can a fourteen-year-old really know about being nothing?
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