A Scarcity of Condors

by Suanne Laqueur

  Then they kissed.

  Everything below Jude’s mouth and jaw melted as everything in the whole wide world threw its head back and screamed at the top of a roller coaster arc, then shut its eyes tight and plummeted over the edge.

  “Think about you all the time,” Feño said.

  Lips tingling, Jude heard his floating head ask “Why?”

  “Because I’m not what anyone thinks I am. I don’t feel the way they think I do. I don’t think the way they want me to. I’m nothing they want me to be. What I am is when I’m with you.”

  This is not happening.

  They kissed again. Harder this time. Committing to it. Opening to teeth and tongues and letting the moans fall out of their throats. Feño’s hands pulled Jude in, pushed him down on the table, pressed him tight and held him fast.

  This is not happening.

  “If anyone finds out,” Feño said, blocking out the sky.

  Jude braced himself. Only one thing could possibly follow. “Don’t say it.”

  “Don’t say what?”

  “That you’ll kill me if I tell anyone.”

  “Shut up.” Feño kissed him. An edge of anger in his mouth, teeth closing on Jude’s bottom lip and tugging. “I want to do a lot of things to you but killing isn’t one of them.”

  His hand spread wide on Jude’s brow. The other slid down Jude’s chest, across his stomach and on top of his jeans. It crept a little further and squeezed.

  Jude cried out, his feet rattling on the table’s bench, his hips bucking into Feño’s palm. “This isn’t happening.”

  Feño unzipped him. “Yes, it is.”

  On New Year’s Day, the Tholets gathered at the house in Alki Beach. After brunch, Serena pulled a handful of five-by-seven envelopes from her shoulder bag. “Dun dun dun,” she sang, passing them around.

  “What are these?” Jude said.

  “The results of that DNA test we took. Remember?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “You totally forgot,” Giosué said.

  “I know. All that spitting and sperm. It’s so unlike me.”

  “Ready to meet your maker, Papi?” Serena said.

  Cleon made a face. “We’ve met.”

  “This last one is Aiden’s. He said I should open it for him.”

  “Can’t believe you got Aiden to spit for you,” Jude said.

  “All boys spit for me.”

  “Ditto.”

  Penny sucked her teeth as she ripped her envelope’s flap. “I hope this shows me how I raised such disgusting children.”

  “Our level of crass is definitely genetic,” Serena said.

  They pulled out the invitation-like cards and the kitchen downshifted into thoughtful quiet.

  “Oh my God,” Penny said. “I’m white.”

  “Shut the front door,” Jude said.

  “Off-white. Eggshell white. Winter white. Linen white. Pale white. I’m shocked.”

  “No really,” Serena said. “What does it say?”

  “British, seventy-four percent. Ireland, Scotland, Wales—sixteen percent. Scandinavia, eight percent. Germanic Europe, two.” She put her card down as if revealing a royal flush. “How about you, querido?”

  “Sixty-nine percent European Jewish,” Cleon said. “Twenty percent Germanic Europe. Six percent France. Five percent North African Jewish.” He tossed the card down next to Penny’s. “Sephardic.”

  “Sephardim,” Giosué said, holding up a palm. Cleon smacked his against it.

  Jude stared at his card, not understanding.

  Iberian Peninsula: 44%.

  Italy: 30%.

  Greece & the Balkans: 15%.

  France: 11%.

  “Me and Jude are probably the same,” Serena said. “I’m forty-three percent European Jewish. Is that what you have?”

  “No,” Jude said.

  “And twenty-five percent British. Then all the rest are little percentages.”

  “Um,” Jude said.

  “Damn, I don’t care if it’s nothing shocking. I still have chills.”

  “Serena?”

  “Jude, what’s the matter?” Penny said.

  All eyes turned on him.

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “What?” Serena reached across for the card in Jude’s confused fingers. For a second he held it back from her, his heart kicking up a beat.

  Something’s wrong.

  He let it go. Watched her read it.

  “What the hell?” she said. “This isn’t right.”

  It’s broken, Jude thought.

  “What does it say?” Cleon asked.

  “Forty-four percent Iberian Peninsula? Thirty percent Italy?”

  “How much Jewish?”

  Serena looked up, then down again. “None.”

  “What?” Penny said.

  “Fifteen percent Greece and Balkans, eleven percent Fran— This can’t be right.”

  A slimy beat of silence. Serena opened Aiden’s card and read off the ethnicities, which were identical to hers with slightly different percentages. She fanned all the cards on the table before her. Cleon and Penny’s side-by-side. Jude, Aiden and Serena lined up below.

  One of these things is not like the other, Jude thought.

  “Well, that’s a little fucked,” Cleon said, clearing his throat. His gaze on Serena was heavy and hopeful. Waiting for the logical explanation he was sure was coming.

  “They must’ve mixed up the kits,” she said. “These have to be someone else’s results.”

  “Or I’m someone else,” Jude said, looking at Giosué because he couldn’t meet anyone else’s eyes.

  “Juleón.” Penny’s hand closed around his wrist. She only used his full name when he was in a fragile state. Reminding him his name was made from the two people she loved best in the world—her husband and her mother, Julia.

  He shrugged and smiled but his lips were numb. His tongue too big for his mouth and his thoughts too big for his skull.

  Something’s wrong.

  “Jude, this is just a mistake,” Cleon said.

  “Human error,” Serena said. “We’ll take another one.”

  “We?” Jude said. He couldn’t say or think more than a handful of words at a time.

  Something is broken.

  “We,” Serena said, her eyes flicking around the table. “We’ll all retake it.”

  Cleon and Penny nodded with a little too much enthusiasm.

  The evening clutched to hold itself together. Jude tried hard to laugh and joke and speak of pleasant things. To affectionately tease Serena and dodge her swats. To almost-flirt with Giosué. To play the piano and be himself. But it was himself sitting like a cold stone in his stomach, making it next to impossible for him to interact with his parents.

  Iberian Peninsula: 44%.

  Italy: 30%.

  He picked a piece of cilantro out of his rice and beans, remembering its soapy taste was a genetic trait. He gave it to Serena, who detected no such taste.

  He’d never given much thought to being the blind bat in a family that could see in the dark, but now his glasses weighed heavy on the bridge of his nose.

  European Jewish: 0%.

  His muscles and bones tingled, measuring his lean, six-foot-one frame and comparing it to Penny and Serena’s petite plumpness. To Cleon’s barrel-chested five-foot-nine and Aiden’s spare five-seven.

  He blinked his eyes. Two bluebells in a bouquet of brown gazes.

  One of these things is not like the other.

  One of these things is wrong.

  He couldn’t sleep that night. He went upstairs to the piano but sat still on the bench, playing only random notes.

  Something’s wrong.

  He stood before a wall in
his living room, where hung his copies of the old family photos. He took each one down, slowly going through his history. Scrutinizing his birth story, looking for holes.

  His father was arrested in October of 1973. Penny was seven months pregnant, alone in the house in La Reina. Well, not entirely alone. Uncle Louis lived in one of the bungalow apartments on the property. The other was occupied by Ysidro Sepúlveda and Tatán Álvarez, the gay couple taking refuge in the haven of the Tholets’ hearts.

  As a unit, they went every day to the Estadio, trying to get information on Cleon. They knew he was in there. The lists of prisoners’ names were posted outside. One day, Cleon’s name was crossed out. “Transported,” was all the family was told.

  Pinochet’s chokehold on the country tightened. The soldiers came to La Reina one November day, looking for dissidents, leftwing sympathizers and foreigners. They dragged Penny and her neighbors into the street, lined them up against property walls and staged a mock firing squad. Staged it not once but three times, until women were screaming and children were pissing themselves in terror. Then the power-drunk soldiers stopped mocking and started shooting.

  Penny, eight months pregnant, watched as her husband’s beloved Uncle Louis was gunned down. Then a rifle butt to the back of the head knocked her out cold. When she came to, she was back in her house, with Ysidro and Tatán. The city was blacked out and under curfew. The phone lines were cut. With the two young men as amateur midwives, she gave birth to Jude on the living room floor.

  “You must’ve been terrified out of your mind,” Jude always said when the story was told.

  Always, Penny gave a little shrug and a self-effacing smile. “I don’t really remember. Just a little fragment here and there. Either the head injury kept any memories from imprinting, or the trauma decided to erase all the memories.”

  Jude of all people could relate to the bizarre things a mind did to protect its owner. He exited far out of his own body when the Condor broke his leg. He recalled little of the pain and fear of the moment. Just a fragment here and there. And of course, he remembered the German Shepherd jumping the fence because goddamn, that was something else.

  He took down a photo of his college graduation. He stood between Cleon and Penny, looking at the camera while they looked only at him.

  These are my parents.

  So where is my Jewish blood? Where is my British?

  Iberian Peninsula: 44%.

  Italy: 30%.

  Ysidro and Tatán got Penny and her newborn baby to the hospital. The hospital registered Jude’s Chilean birth certificate with Santiago’s civil clerk, but Penny had a second one registered with the consulate, making him a Canadian citizen.

  I’m a Canadian citizen, a Chilean nationalist and a permanent resident of the United States.

  I am me. Juleón Tholet, son of Cleon Tholet and Penelope Cambie.

  He took down the picture of Uncle Louis. Thick dark hair, like Jude’s. Heavy glasses, like Jude’s. Tall like Jude, hopelessly myopic like Jude, dimpled like Jude.

  Gay like Jude.

  A wild, irrational thought: Are you my father?

  What the fuck, of course not. Louis didn’t have a fucking affair with Penny. He was an old man. Well, old-ish. But he was gay. He was castrated in Sachsenhausen, for fuck’s sake. He couldn’t impregnate anyone.

  Then who did?

  He imagined an ugly scene after he left his parents’ house tonight. Cleon demanding answers as to Jude’s parentage.

  No.

  Wait.

  Jude’s results showed no British ethnicity. Penny should be demanding answers from her husband.

  But how can she if I have no Jewish ancestry?

  He was confused as fuck.

  “This is fucked,” he said, his voice small against the wall of pictures, his framed diploma among them. His finger traced his name in somber calligraphy: Juleón Tholet.

  I took my mother’s name and your father’s name and made you.

  “But where is her DNA?” Jude asked his history. “Forty-four percent Iberian Peninsula.”

  That meant he was Spanish, right?

  Spanish and Italian. Maybe Greek. A little French.

  The soldiers came to La Reina. They roughed up my mother.

  “Did they rape her?”

  His brow furrowed tight a moment, then he shook his head, flicking off the disturbing thought. More impossibilities. She was already eight months pregnant. Furthermore—he played the scenario out—if it was rape and she lied about Jude’s birth date or his age, he’d still have her DNA. He had nothing of Penny’s. Nothing of Cleon’s, either.

  I’m not their child.

  His mouth was bone dry. He’d work up some spit and take the test again. No logical explanation existed but human error. It was Giosué who typed the kit numbers into the website, after all. He probably transposed some letters and numbers. It was a mistake. Jude’s second test would match Serena and Aiden, and this would be a hilarious story to tell someday, plus a spectacular reason to flirtatiously give Giosué shit.

  He got back in bed, but before settling down, he took his phone and texted Penny. It was late, she wouldn’t see until morning, but he needed her to know:

  I’m so glad you’re my mom and I don’t tell you enough. I love you.

  He sent it. Defiantly. Daring his DNA to contradict him.

  He punched the pillows around, getting comfortable. He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath and exhaled.

  The marrow in his left shinbone trembled.

  Something’s wrong.

  Penny slept badly and as soon as light began to fill the bedroom, she got up and made coffee. She stood at the kitchen counter, listening to the drips and concentrating on the level of rising java, cup by cup, so she wouldn’t have to think of anything else. Not until she was sitting on the couch, wrapped in a blanket. On the coffee table were the five DNA result cards. She looked through each one, ending with Jude’s, then stared at the wall of family photos behind the piano.

  This is your family.

  It’s a mistake.

  These have to be someone else’s results.

  Human error.

  She drew a long, shaky breath past the knot of anxiety in her chest. Took a long sip of coffee, hoping to dissolve it with heat.

  44% Iberian peninsula.

  30% Italy.

  “It makes no sense,” she said across the rim of the mug. She dropped Jude’s card, got up and walked closer to the wall, studying the old photos, looking for new clues.

  Her mother’s eyes stared back at her, soft and liquid. Julia’s death ripped a hole in Penny’s life, but it also put Penny on a trajectory toward Chile and the man who would become her husband.

  Her fingertip traced her father’s square head and blunt, earnest expression. When the Tholets fled Santiago, it was into the haven of Walter Cambie’s home.

  This is my home, this is my family. This will never change and this is all that matters.

  Except…

  She chewed her fingernail, staring at the face of Louis Tholet, Cleon’s uncle. It took two years after he was liberated from Sachsenhausen for the Red Cross to track down his brother in Chile. He arrived in Santiago in 1947 and lived with the family until the day he died, which was the same day Jude was born.

  November 25, 1973.

  Springtime in Chile, but Pinochet had the country frozen in terror. Most of Santiago’s radio stations had gone silent and some TV channels showed only static. Irregular blackouts rolled across the bowl of the city, plunging it into even deeper darkness.

  Cleon’s name was crossed off the list of prisoners posted outside the Estadio. The guards said he was transported but wouldn’t say where. They were lying, for all Penny knew. Cleon could be dead. And she was going mad. Sick and sleepless, pacing the rooms of her house in La Reina. So
me nights, Uncle Louis shuffled over in slippers to light the kettle and share the misery. Sometimes the light went on in the bungalow where Ysidro and Tatán lived, then one or both came over to pace.

  Her mouth bitter with coffee and confusion, Penny studied the picture of the young gay couple. Nothing in their gregarious, thrown-back heads attested to their neighborhood nickname: Los Reyes de la Muerte. The Kings of Death. Tatán was an undertaker and Ysidro a memorial mason. Tatán prepared the bodies for burial. Ysidro marked the final resting place. Each was the heir to a family business and the families had worked together for three generations. Ysidro and Tatán had known each other since the playpen. They’d been in love since they were sixteen.

  November 25, 1973. The day the soldiers came to La Reina. The last day of Louis Tholet’s life. The day the Kings of Death became schooled in the business of birth.

  Penny could give the day a title, but she couldn’t remember all its events. When she attempted to recreate an hour-by-hour timeline, she felt fraudulent. An unreliable narrator. Unable to distinguish what were authentic memories and which were embellished. Or invented.

  The soldiers came to La Reina, looking for dissidents, socialists, foreigners, communists, troublemakers. Or anyone associated with such people. Neighbors were dragged from their homes, Penny and Louis among them. The soldiers lined them up against a high brick wall and staged a mock execution.

  Penny’s hand went to the back of her head, fingertips walking along the scar at her nape. One of the soldiers rifle-butted her. She went down. Then she went out.

  When she fluttered back to consciousness, she was on the floor of her house, riding the waves of active labor. The sun had gone down and the house was in total darkness. Santiago was blacked out again and before leaving, the soldiers had cut the phone lines.

  After sunset, the city was under a curfew. The army and DINA, Pinochet’s secret police, had carte blanche to arrest anyone on the streets. Penny couldn’t leave the house, couldn’t leave the unspeakable pain that had her by all four limbs and her head. So she blacked out again. Clawed her way up through the darkness only to scream in agony and retreat.

  In and out of the dark. Her memory fell into smaller and smaller pieces. Different shades of black. Snippets of sound. It was a movie from a dream she’d read in a book about someone else’s past life.