by Mary Morris
She makes me sit still while she puts a little blowing machine on my nail. “So,” she says, “you are enjoying your visit to la isla?”
“Oh, yes,” I tell her, “I am having a wonderful time.” “And did you see everything I told you to see.” “Oh, yes,” I tell her, thinking she can’t be putting me on. She must not know. “That and more.”
When my nail is dry, I go into the lobby bathroom across the hall. There a young woman approaches me. She is thin with a greenish tint to her face. She looks ill, but also threatening at the same time. Either she will beg or she will rob me. She is carrying a baby who sucks on a pacifier so I assume it will be the former. The woman takes the pacifier out of the baby’s mouth and holds it up to my face. The baby can’t suck, the woman tells me. I stare at the pacifier, which has a big hole where the nipple should be. The nipple is not good. Now the woman points to her heart. And my heart is not good.
In the brief moment that we stand there, face-to-face, she tells me the story of her life. She has three more children at home and no job. Her husband has left her and she does not know where to find him. It was a love marriage, but he could not find work and he began to drink. Then he began to hit her until late one night he walked out, as he did so many nights. But that night he did not come back again. She cannot feed her children, let alone herself. The woman tells me that she is twenty-three years old and her heart is failing her. She puts her hand to her throat as if she will throw up. This country, she says, her voice filled with disdain, it will never be right.
I know she wants money, but I offer to go into the tienda and buy the baby a nipple. The woman nods at me, grateful. But the tienda doesn’t have a nipple, so I buy other things instead. Cans of Spam and sardines, cheese, shampoo, pencils. Tuna fish, crackers, children’s T-shirts, little shoes.
When I hand her the bag and she feels its heft, her threatening look is gone. “Why are you doing this?” she asks, gazing into the bag.
“Because I am being deported,” I tell her, “so I thought I’d give you these things.” As a going-away present, I want to add.
Now her face is visibly altered. “Why are you being deported?” she asks.
“Because I am a journalist,” I tell her.
“Suerte,” she tells me, her face welling up in tears. “Take care of yourself.”
As I stand in the lobby, staring at the double doors, I see Major Lorenzo approaching. My Major Lorenzo, I think. He is waving something at me and I see pieces of paper in his hands, fluttering in the breeze. I see my father when I got into college with the letters of acceptance he’d opened and read, greeting me at the door.
“Well,” Major Lorenzo says, “it is done. Here are your documents. You will leave on tomorrow’s plane.”
Forty-seven
PERHAPS Rosalba knew right away that Isabel was gone. She did not know because there was no longer the smell of mint tea and incense wafting from downstairs, no mantras being chanted, no windows flung open or flower petals carpeting the floor. She knew because everything was so still, the air heavy with a yellowish tinge. When you live on an island and the breeze stops, it can only mean one thing. It is a gathering offerees elsewhere. A hurricane out to sea. Rosalba had not felt such a heaviness in the air in the thirty-five years since Isabel was born. It had been that long since the wind ripped the wall of mangroves out by the roots, opening the vistas to the sea, and a whale was found in the swimming pool of someone who would soon flee la isla and never return.
Toward evening the wind picked up. Milagro arrived with her pillow and a teddy bear clutched in her arms as if she were a small child and Rosalba knew that what she sensed and feared was so. She closed the storm shutters, battening down the house. Then she made tea with mint she plucked from the plant that grew wild on the patio and they sat together in the breeze. Milagro turned to her grandmother and said, “Would you go too? If you could, would you go?”
Rosalba shook her head slowly. “Everything I have is here,” she said. “I would never leave.”
Rosalba sat beside Milagro who was lying on the cot. She stroked the child’s brow as she had once stroked other children’s brows. She loved their moist heads, their cherubic faces when they slept. She loved the smell of sleeping children, and a peacefulness settled over her.
When Milagro was finally asleep, Rosalba tiptoed out of the room and went downstairs. She walked into Isabel’s empty apartment, where the heavy wind that would bring torrents was starting to blow, and struggled to pull the shutters closed. As soon as she did, she felt the air growing heavy, dust settling on the furniture. She would keep these rooms in darkness, the way she kept hers upstairs, and they would remain closed for a long time. Then she went outside and stood beneath the now whirling branches of the frangipani and thought how she held to this place as stubbornly as the screw pines clung to the ground.
Rosalba made a bath for herself, a warm bath on a warm night, and she scented the bath with vanilla and almond oil. From under the sink she produced a bottle of Come to Me, Love bath oil and this she also poured in. She lit votive candles on her nightstand, beside her bed. To Madre de Caridad she prayed for her daughter’s safe arrival and for someone else’s return. A long night of waves pummeling the shore stretched before her, branches banging her shutters as if begging to be let in.
Rosalba undressed in the steamy room and lowered her blue-veined legs into the water, which stung her. She lay her head back, listening as the rains pounded the roof, as drips flowed through the ceiling. She closed her eyes and envisioned her grandmother being tossed in her sea grave, her own father perhaps seeking shelter on distant isles, her daughters having escaped to another continent, and the only man she’d ever loved on an exercise bike in a small apartment where he slept alone, not a mile from where she lay. As she listened to the wind pound her shutters as it hadn’t since the night Isabel was born, she invoked them all.
At first she thought it was the wind she heard when the car drove up in low gear. She jumped from her drowsy bath when the car door slammed. The footsteps were hard, but slower than she remembered them, as they clicked along the blue-slate walk. He had aged, she could tell, because he had lost the briskness in his walk, but it was not death that had brought him back. The child that had kept them apart would now, at least for this night, bring them together again.
When she got downstairs, he was standing in her entryway, tall and sturdy as she remembered, but his beard salt-and-pepper now, red rims around his eyes. He walked with her into the living room, where they stood for a moment before the cane chairs. He stared into their hollow centers and said, “It has been a long time, Rosa.”
She took him by the arm. “Why don’t we sit on the patio,” she said.
Forty-eight
THE PROSTITUTES are determined to get me outside. María says it isn’t natural. I’ve been in too long. I try to explain to them that I can’t leave. They don’t understand what this means. We’ll dress you up, they say. You should have one night on the town. We’ll go to El Colibrí. We’ll dance at the Flamingo, at the Palacio de Salsa. Flora offers me her gold jewelry and María says she has a skirt with flowers around the edge that will look great on me. Dark glasses, black lipstick. They’ll wrap my hair under a turban. No one will know it is me. I leave tomorrow and I have my documents in hand. What the hell.
“You don’t understand,” I tell them, “I can’t.” They laugh and wave their hands. “You can go with us,” they say.
It is a warm night in Ciudad del Caballo, but then all the nights are warm. A sea breeze blows and I breathe it in. In the plaza men sit on benches as we walk by. Arm-in-arm, I walk with Eva on one side, Flora on the other. María leads the way. We have sneaked past the guard at the hotel. He didn’t recognize me in the floral jumpsuit, the dark glasses and straw hat on my head that the prostitutes lent me in the bathroom, laughing as they dressed me like a doll.
Men whistle as we walk past. Two Germans join us and one of them in broken Spanish says he
’d like to buy us dinner and more. His friend seems to take a liking to me and loops his arm through mine. I try to shake him away, but Flora gives me a knowing wink. I must play this part, I tell myself. I am in their hands. Other men join us. One from France, another from Holland. The girls are laughing and I can’t believe that I am out with them, that men are asking me to accompany them for the night. The three women who are used to this sort of thing negotiate a price. We head to El Colibrí for dinner.
“You see,” María whispers to me, “it’s easy. We will find someone who will marry us and take us away.”
“We will be free,” Flora says.
El Colibrí is located at a cul-de-sac down unlit winding streets. It has been two years since I was here, but nothing has changed. The same decomposing snake skins and rattlers above the bar, the same signed photographs of fading athletes, visiting dignitaries, local bathing beauties years ago. The bar is crammed with people, sipping drinks of rum and fresh mint. Waiters rush by, balancing over their heads trays heaped with platters of rice and beans, chicharrones de pollo, and sweet plantains.
The men find a table and order beer all around and tell the girls to order whatever they want. I hear them shouting at the waiter. “Ropa vieja,” María says, “and carne asado. Chicharrones.” They order abundantly and the men don’t seem to care.
“So,” the German man who has attached himself to me says, “¿Cómo te llamas?” He touches me with his finger under my chin. He is perhaps forty with thinning yellow hair. He smells of tobacco and soap.
“Me llamo …” I think for a moment, wondering what I should call myself. Then it becomes quite clear. “Me llamo Isabel.”
“Bueno, Isabel, ¿te gusta bailar?”
María, Eva, and Flora are laughing, egging me on. “Tell him you want to go dancing. Tell him you want to have a good time.”
“Yes,” I tell him, “I want to go dancing. I want to have fun.” After dinner, he says, he’ll take us to the Flamingo, to the Palacio de Salsa. And I wonder how I’ll get away from him when dinner is over.
The restaurant is packed and very noisy and he can scarcely hear me. He leans across the table and I lean forward in order to shout in his ear. That is when I see Manuel sitting in a back corner of the restaurant. He is smoking a cigarette with a drink in his hand and for a moment he seems to see me, but he must not recognize me because he looks away.
I think perhaps I’ll wave, at least I should say good-bye, but he is talking with someone. He is sitting with a man who has his back to me but I can make out the smooth round head, the broad shoulders. He is a large, heavyset man. On the back of his blue guayabera there are splotches of sweat.
I know this man. At first I cannot place him, but suddenly I do. I have spoken with him several times since I have been on la isla. Why would Manuel be sitting here with this man? Why should they be together at all? I do not wait to know the answer because Manuel is looking my way. I rise slowly, excusing myself. Suddenly I find I cannot breathe. It is as if the air has been choked out of the room. “I’ll be right back,” I say. The German man reaches for me, trying to pull me down, but I wrench my arm from his. “I’ll be right back. Tengo que ir al baño.”
I break away and head for the door. María, Eva, and Flora follow me with their gazes and I can hear their laughter as I race into the street, turning down an alleyway away from El Colibrí. I run down unfamiliar streets, illuminated by only the blue light of televisions, that seem to loop in and out of one another, crisscrossing. The streets all look the same and I have lost my bearings. Dogs run along the alleyways, skinnier than I remember them. One of them follows me for a long time.
I search for landmarks, things I recall. A church, the harbor, some monument that I could recognize from my tours. But I feel as if I could be anywhere in any city, lost in its maze of streets. At last I see a road that opens into a grove of trees and I head for the main square just ahead of me. From there I can see my hotel with its lights on and I hesitate, wondering how can I go in. Will the guard let me through? Will they recognize me? I have no choice but to go in through the front doors. I approach the building. Then, taking a deep breath, I walk inside.
Major Lorenzo is sitting in a wicker chair in the lobby, staring at me as I walk in. Actually, though he is staring at me, it is unclear if he really sees me, because his face makes no sign of recognition. His eyes are set on me, but he seems to be looking right past, or through me, the way he has so many times in the last few days. It is as if I am not real to him anymore, and this thought is very frightening. Now I am invisible, as if I have disappeared, a ghost walking through the lobby of the hotel, joining the other ghosts who have walked here before.
But then his eyes come into focus. I am wearing the dark glasses, straw hat, and floral jumpsuit that the prostitutes lent me, so perhaps it took him a little while to recognize me, but I can see from the look in his eyes that I have let him down. I am a big disappointment and perhaps now he’ll have the excuse he’s needed all along to make me really disappear.
Instead he rises, walking in my direction, and in a voice that is incredibly cold he tells me that I should go and get some sleep because we have to leave for the airport in three hours and that he’ll be down here, waiting for me, the whole time.
I go upstairs and pack. Methodically I arrange everything on the bed as if I have to be very organized for the next stop on the itinerary, as if I’m not going to get home and throw everything in the wash. I fold, stack, order my things as if I am taking a very long trip and everything must be just so. I take what the prostitutes have lent me and put these on a separate pile on the dresser so I don’t forget them.
Then I close my bag and there is that very final sound of a zipper being zipped, locks clicking into place. When my bag is shut and everything is put away and the room is as empty as it was when I first arrived, I open the balcony’s French doors and walk out into the warm Caribbean night. Voices rise from the plaza, men shouting, a woman’s laughter. In the distance the lights of the city sparkle and I lean back, gazing up at the stars. They shimmer above me and I feel far away from anyone and anything I have ever known. I think again how simple it could be to just lose yourself somewhere in the world, to go away and never return, and only the few people you’ve left behind, who would probably stop looking after a while, would ever really think about where or why you’ve gone. Or what became of you.
I am still standing on the balcony when the phone rings and Major Lorenzo tells me it is time to come downstairs. “I’ll be right down,” I tell him. At the doorway my bags stand, ready to go. I check the closets, the drawers, and everything is done. But before leaving the room I have one more thing to do.
I go into the bathroom and one last time try to pry the window open where the frog has been wedged. That is when I see the lock on the side of the window, a small latch. Somehow I have missed it all the other times I looked. Now I flip the latch and the window opens. Dust and debris fly out, but the frog does not move.
I prod it with my finger, but I have waited too long; it is already dead. Then there seems to be a movement, a flutter of limbs. I take the creature and put it in the sink, where it revives as I run water over it, twitching its limbs, blinking its eyes. Not knowing what else to do, I place the frog in a potted plant as I leave my room.
When I get to the bar, the Dutch boys are there with María, Eva, and Flora, who have also never gone to bed. They are drinking beer, laughing. When I walk down with my bags, the women smile, but don’t say anything to me. On a chair I leave the floral jumpsuit, the broad-rimmed hat, the glasses they lent me.
Though it is barely four in the morning, Major Lorenzo has kept the vigil as he promised he would to take me to the airport. He says nothing about my escapades of the night before and seems as friendly as he’s ever been. There is time, it seems, for a coffee, which we sip slowly as one of the Dutch boys presses Flora against the pool table, his body arching over hers.
It is dark as we drive t
hrough the streets of Ciudad del Caballo. I have been awake all night, knowing I’ll sleep on the plane. Patches of fog obliterate the highway, where people are already riding bicycles to work. At bus stops workers wait. The aide who has not spoken two words to me the entire time I have been here drives in his usual silence. But he is not wearing his reflector shades and for the first time I can see his face in the rearview mirror. Without his glasses I am amazed at how young and boyish he is.
Major Lorenzo is chatty. If he is angry about my disobedience the night before, he does not let on. He loves Canada, he tells me, but it is too cold. He has been there thirty times.
“Thirty?” I ask, amazed.
“Oh, yes, I love to travel,” he says.
“Yes,” I murmur, feeling very tired. “I do too.”
Though it is only a little past four A.M., the airport is jammed. Long lines snake past counters. Travelers, anxious to depart, drag their bags to the scales. Everyone seems to have boxes, huge suitcases, the size of trunks.
“You don’t need to worry,” Major Lorenzo says, “I will take you right through.” He smiles as he says this. It is his job. To expedite my departure, to make my presence a matter of history. He carries my luggage, walks me to the head of a line. A woman with long mango-colored fingernails looks at my ticket. I wonder who did her nails as she puts tags on my luggage and ushers me through. It is helpful, I think, to have a major from the Department of the Interior at your service.
We go upstairs to the departure lounge—a room I know only too well. As he escorts me to the head of the customs line, Major Lorenzo says he must take care of something and will be back soon. I ask him not to leave me, but he says there is nothing to fear. I watch his back as he walks away. There is a slump in his shoulders. The customs official looks at my passport. He stares at it for a long time. Then he picks up the phone. He speaks with his lips pressed to the receiver and I think he has called his lover, some woman he plans to meet after he gets off his shift. But after a few moments, he presses his hand to the receiver. “Would you please step aside?” he asks politely.
