Ruins

by Achy Obejas

  Usnavy swerved, directed the snout of his new (used) bike away from the water, away from the stone columns, from the seawall. He spiraled around the groups of young people, laughter rising like steam, their mouths scarlet, feral.

  The night is a perfumed insult on the beast’s cheek; a sterilized night, a night without shame, without memory, without history, an Antillean night …

  In the far corner of his eye, Usnavy spied a young woman—a girl, really, an adolescent: slender, long-limbed, with charcoal eyebrows and skin like wax. She carefully scaled the seawall: first up, leaning on the extended hand of a young man, just to the ledge, where they strolled like that, their fingertips barely touching, for what seemed a viscid and unreal time. She was carrying a satchel, something made of brown fabric or draft paper. The boy stretched his other hand ahead of him, into the air, the moist tropical air. And then they descended, both of them kneeling, then fading behind the seawall, throwing up a quick black flash of shadows cast by a beam from below.

  “Say-hnor? Say-hnor?” A voice murmured into Usnavy’s seashell ear: a voice with a fractured, staggering accent.

  Where’s the girl?

  “Say-hnor? Say-hnor?” Somebody was pulling on his sleeve, with a laugh that gurgled weightlessly.

  Usnavy thought his heart stopped for an instant. He tried to speak but his mouth opened to nothingness, only to his own torrid breath.

  Nena? Nenita?

  He rolled his head in dismay.

  “Buddy, what you got? Fake cigars? Fake Lams? Fake lamps? Fake girls?”

  Usnavy could sense the sea; he could feel the weight of the water pulling him down.

  As soon as Usnavy heard the news the next day, he grabbed his bike and pedaled over to Montserrate, where the domino game was in full bloom. Neither Lidia nor Nena were to be found when he awoke; neither had been home when his eyes dropped their veil the night before and he had been too wiped out to resist. To his dismay, these days it wasn’t unusual that either would be out late. But what struck him as peculiar was that he didn’t hear either ever come in. Had he been that tired? Were they uncommonly quiet? Or was something else entirely going on?

  As he neared the domino game, there were so many spectators that Usnavy couldn’t even see the players. Besides a handful of the usual sapos—so many of these kept vanishing into the sea—all sorts of folks from the neighborhood were crowding the table, spilling out to the road, so that what few cars angled by had to slow down and slither around them. There were even women there too, women like Rosita who would normally scorn dominos, who might even resent the game because her current husband or lover found it more comforting than her company.

  “Pssst, Usnavy!” Rosita motioned him toward her with a wave of the hand.

  “I heard about Mayito,” he said solemnly, scanning the crowd for Frank but not seeing him.

  “Oh, that’s old news,” Rosita said with a dismissive wave.

  “How can it be old news if I just heard it?” he asked, irritated, all the while thinking: Could it be possible? Had he drifted so far that no one would think to tell him that Mayito had left the country? That it wasn’t on a boat like everybody else, like Obdulio, but with a real, honest-togoodness visa procured by his long-departed wife?

  “You’re behind, that’s all,” Rosita said with a titter.

  “So it’s true?”

  “Yes, yes—listen, Usnavy, don’t feel bad.” She touched his arm. “Mayito didn’t tell anybody, not even Frank. Actually, maybe least of all Frank. His wife got him that visa months ago; he was just sitting on it, trying to decide. And when he finally did, he only had a few days left on it before it expired. It wasn’t a rash decision, he’d been thinking about it.”

  How could he not know any of this? How could he ever again say he and Mayito were friends? He wasn’t so much bothered by the fact that he’d left—it was a surprise, sure, but in a way it didn’t matter, everybody seemed to be leaving—but it gnawed at him that Mayito hadn’t shared any of it with him.

  Usnavy shook his head. This was, of course, the same damn reasoning Frank had used to humiliate Diosdado about his son that one day. How could he fall into this trap so quickly?

  “So what is this—the world championship or something?” he asked Rosita, looking out at the game but still straddling his bike. He knew a bunch of the remaining sapos were already eyeing it jealously, and knew too that he wouldn’t release it from between his legs no matter how long he hung out today. He tugged on the chains around his chest, not to show how secure they might be but as an implied threat, in case any of them decided they could take an old man.

  Rosita leaned toward him and cupped her hands around her mouth: “It’s Reynaldo—come back as a woman!”

  Oh man, thought Usnavy: Too bad there were so few of the original sapos left in the crowd—they would certainly have good stories when they got home tonight! He craned his neck to look. “Where?”

  For Usnavy, to imagine Reynaldo as a woman was to envision the boy he knew in a dress. Reynaldo’s face would be the same, with barely a fuzz casting a shadow on his cheek; his new breasts would be a couple of dollops of flesh on his chest; his vanquished member nothing but a black hole.

  Then he had a startling and disturbing thought: What if he couldn’t recognize Reynaldo at all? What if Reina was actually a woman like any other woman? What if she could suddenly integrate and fade into any neighborhood, scars invisible to the human eye? He wondered what Mayito would have made of all this.

  “What do you think, huh?” whispered Jacinto, who had sidled up next to Usnavy. “Do you think, if you were with her, that you could tell? I mean, down there?”

  Usnavy flinched. But, in fact, he was thinking the same thing in his own way: What if nobody could ever really tell the truth about those around them? And what was the truth anyway? How many of the guys all around him might want to do like Reynaldo but didn’t have a way, or the nerve, to follow through?

  Usnavy surveyed the remaining sapos. He’d always thought he knew them, but now, between Mayito’s flight and Reina’s return, he wondered: Who are these guys? What are they capable of? Who can walk away and who will live forever wondering, doubting, yearning for what might have been?

  The autistic boy sat in his chair, staring, unchanged and unchanging.

  And what about him? What could the sapos tell about him that was perhaps indiscernible in the mirror’s reflection? Had anyone figured out his secrets—the truth about his magnificent lamp? His mother? His father’s mysterious disappearance? Did they know about his ambitions or fears? Could they tell how badly he missed Obdulio, how much he’d miss Mayito? Did they see that when it came to his only child, his heart was as cracked as most of the stuff under the rocks at a derrumbe?

  Usnavy was dizzy with worry, his hands trembling on the handlebars.

  “I think,” said Jacinto abruptly, his voice still at a whisper, “that we’re drawn to intimacy by all that mystifies us, you know? I mean, I’m looking at that girl, at Reina, and I want to be there, with her, inside her—Usnavy, she excites me—and she’s a girl, sure, but part of it, for me, is what she was too, all the secrets on the path to—”

  A startled Usnavy cut him off. “Hey—I’m not your psychiatrist, okay, Jacinto? Go to the doctor for that, you hear me?”

  This was going too far, he thought, though he still hadn’t been able to figure out who Reina was in that crowd. He started to turn the bike away, to inch out of the throng and go look for Nena, when he heard Frank.

  “Oh, look who’s here,” he said with a facetiously flirtatious tone, but he wasn’t talking about Reina, wherever she might be, but about Usnavy, with his bike between his legs and a wounded Jacinto at his side. “Look who has decided to grace us with his presence.” Frank smirked, his rubbery Hollywood face back to its cruel tricks now that he had an audience. “Usnavy Martín Leyva, master of dollars!”

  It was vintage Frank: mean, mean, mean. And, of course, now there was no Mayito to tempe
r him. Usnavy shifted uncomfortably as the mob turned its envious eyes on him. He held tightly to the handlebars. Jacinto stepped back, suddenly appraising him.

  “Usnavy?” asked a voice from inside the circle, an airy voice, like a flute playing a merry tune. It wasn’t Nena. The sapos parted in surprise, almost in slow motion and with a strange deference. Usnavy’s stomach lurched. There in the center of the throng was a lovely young woman in a spring print dress—a tasteful but common dress, nothing extravagant, nothing outrageous. Her shoulders sloped like Nena’s, her hair was sandy and free flowing, cheeks flushed, and her mouth—it was the only thing that seemed out of place—was full, maybe too full.

  Usnavy recognized Reynaldo immediately, or more precisely, recognized all the familiar gestures, the languor, the mind-boggling vulnerability. If in Reynaldo all those qualities had been frustrating and even alien, in Reina they were perfectly at home. She stood now with her hands on the shoulders of a vaguely attractive man—a foreigner—who’d been let into the domino game as a kind of indulgence.

  “Usnavy … don’t you remember me?” she asked, laughing a bit nervously.

  This was unsettling for Usnavy. Reina’s tone suggested a level of comfort between them he had never had. Why was she so friendly toward him all of a sudden? He pulled the bike up like an unruly colt, feeling the metal bar between his legs. Then he saw an anxious Diosdado looking up at him from the domino table, his eyes pleading.

  “Of course I remember you,” Usnavy said with a weak smile.

  Reina beamed back, not just relieved but enchanted, her hands coming together in front of her surprisingly small breasts as if she were going to clap or pray (like Yoandry only days before). Diosdado fidgeted, unsure what to do, what to say; his eyes shiny like those of men who’ve been jailed or hospitalized too long. Usnavy’s face flushed red, though he himself wasn’t sure why.

  Then the man whose shoulders Reina had been touching stood up, extending his hand toward Usnavy. “Hi, I’m Howard, Howard Reich—Reina’s fiancé,” he said in a muscular, masculine voice. He spoke nearly flawless Spanish. He was either young or young-looking, but not at odds with Reina. In fact, the glances he exchanged with her as he reached out to Usnavy revealed a generous lingua franca that rendered the bystanders quiet and amazed. “Good to meet you,” Howard added as his hand clasped Usnavy’s. It was a sure grip. (Later Usnavy would wonder why this surprised him.)

  Howard was blondish, much like the Americans at Guantánamo from Usnavy’s childhood, with hay-yellow streaks floating on top of darker, richer, healthy hair. He dressed well, but casually, with the ease that comes with real wealth: Usnavy realized it was all in the manners and accessories—the simple but exquisite wristwatch, the thin but elegant belt, the fact that his linen shorts were pressed.

  If your son is going to become a woman and bring home a man, thought Usnavy, then this one is not so bad. In an unguarded moment, he could admit Howard pleased him enough for Nena, at least initially, and especially when he thought back to the creepy moment with Yoandry at the door to his room. All in all, Diosdado might be lucky after all.

  Howard sat back down and refocused on his dominos.

  “What …?” asked Frank, obviously not happy that Usnavy had managed the introduction without stumbling and surprised that both Howard and Reina seemed to be especially open to him. “Rrrrrreina”—Frank pronounced her name with sarcasm, dragging the R—“now you like him better than me?”

  Frank’s move was nasty not because Usnavy had ever been especially close to Reynaldo—whom he never understood, whom he wished would just stop being such a source of anguish to his father (this wish never translated into anything concrete, though: Usnavy never asked the forces of the universe to make Reynaldo different one way or the other, just to stop being a problem, that’s all)—but because, in fact, it was Frank who had often been provocative toward the boy, calling him a faggot to his face when his father wasn’t around, making derisive comments about him left and right, and, at least once, threatening him with a beating if he ever stood behind him again.

  What Frank was doing now was an unthinkable breach of etiquette. It was fine that Frank did what he did behind Diosdado’s back; it was even acceptable that he should poke at Diosdado with all sorts of sadistic innuendos and drive him crazy. But it was never okay to embarrass anyone in public like this: Offspring were a joy or a shame, but still the crown of their elders, nature’s unpredictable creatures.

  The remaining sapos were visibly stunned by Frank too, as if caught in a freeze-frame. Diosdado seemed to disappear behind his dominos, his skin a paler shade by the minute, hands slick from perspiration. Usnavy thought Diosdado might actually cry. What could that poor man do here in his own defense?

  “I always liked almost anybody better than you, Frank,” Reina said. She flashed him a hard smile; her eyes cold black bullets. Then she placed her hand on Howard, who did not betray any emotion. Diosdado seemed both startled and oddly pleased.

  “Even good ol’ cursed Usnavy?—cause he’s salao, you know,” Frank snickered. He shoved a cigar in his mouth and lit it dramatically, but Usnavy could tell he’d been caught off guard by the girl. Without Mayito around, it was as if Frank had no center, no compass.

  “Enough,” said a steady Howard in his textbook Spanish, not bothering to even look up at Frank. To Usnavy, the foreign fellow’s face was so still, so emotionless, it seemed as though he wasn’t really speaking, but that he was throwing his voice instead: It was as if his words appeared in the air, unconnected to anything, like biblical pronouncements perhaps.

  “Enough?” Frank asked incredulously. He’d been leaning back in his chair and this caused him to drop down to the ground. “Enough what, mees-ter?”

  Usnavy looked around desperately.

  “I thought we were playing,” said Howard, expressionless still, his eyes on the black and yellow pieces in his hand. “I thought you would teach me this game Cuban-style, which I’ve heard so much about.”

  Then, out of nowhere, the sapo sitting in for Mayito—Oscar Luis, the cab driver—dropped a domino into the middle of the table: a double two. The others gasped. It was a lousy opening but that was not what really jolted them: Their representative, the stand-in for Frank’s most loyal of lieutenants, was not playing along with Frank. Oscar Luis looked Frank right in the eye, undeterred, daring him. The story was getting better.

  “What the fuck is that?” Frank protested, flustered.

  Sensing his helplessness, the sapos laughed, loud and hearty.

  “Just play, Frank,” Oscar Luis said firmly.

  Then—with Frank’s shaky fingers hovering above his pieces as they stared each other down—a distracted Jacinto inadvertently stepped into the act. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” he said to no one in particular. He gazed at Reina: It was pure admiration, nothing lascivious or ugly in it.

  Usnavy lifted a finger to his lips, signaling quiet. Was this man nuts?

  Then one of the sapos—a mechanic named Ernesto—snapped in the war veteran’s direction: “It’s all plastic, man, so don’t go getting too excited.”

  “What? What now?” Frank demanded from the table. His hand was a fist like Yoandry’s, but not as big, not as hammy.

  The malevolent Ernesto grinned, showing holes in his teeth. “Jacinto here thinks she’s beautiful, man,” he said, pointing at Reina with a lewd finger.

  The other sapos rustled, mortified. Diosdado seemed to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His lips were open in an O, a ring of saliva dried white and chalky around them. There was a huge arch of sweat under his arms now, and perspiration was dripping from his brow, clouding his glasses.

  But none of this mattered: Reina stood with her neck white and swanlike in the midday sun. Here was a woman, Usnavy could see, who would be deemed perfect by the crowd under any other circumstance. Here was a woman who could wait forever if necessary while her man took care of business in a bar or vestibule somewhere; she would not sigh
in exasperation, she would not complicate matters by letting strangers get too close, she would not pretend to busy herself with banalities such as filing her nails. Instead, she would pull a paperback from her bag, or maybe do a little window shopping without straying too far (and possibly even pick up a little something for her beau—a sack of roasted peanuts, a flower for him that she would later wear in her hair); most likely she would lean against the wall, or cross her legs discreetly while on a couch or park bench, and watch the world around her—the mothers and their litters of children, the tired women and men crawling home from work, or creeping out for the evening, still adjusting their bra straps or belts.

  Diosdado just seemed to gape at her: Reynaldo? Is that really you?

  “She is beautiful,” Jacinto asserted, tipping an imaginary hat at her like his father back in the sepia portrait in his room. He gave Howard a congratulatory nod.

  “What is the matter with you people?” a furious Frank exclaimed. All of a sudden, he slammed his pieces flat on the table. The sapos peeled back.

  A resigned Oscar Luis folded each one of his dominos facedown, like miniature coffins.

  “Have you all lost your mind?” Frank demanded, getting up now, his simian arms held out from his body.

  Poor Frank, Usnavy thought with a sudden realization: Nobody waits for him, there’s nobody to pretend not to see his faults, nobody to offer love’s great gift of forgiveness.

  Then Howard stood up, lifted his hand in Reina’s direction, and pulled her toward him protectively. A trembling Diosdado rose too, his pieces having been turned down already, and in some sort of awkward and unspoken covenant with Howard, muttered apologies to those around and stepped away from the game. Both his shirt and pants were soaked, clinging to him like a giant jellyfish.

  “Where do you think you’re going, huh?” Frank rasped, jumping up and down in place, but he was getting smaller and smaller as he squirmed and thrust his chest at the visitors. “Come back here!”