“Wouldn’t you think someone would be looking for her? Wouldn’t you think she would be missing?”
Abilene shrugged. Everyone doesn’t have someone.
“Pola heard us talking about it, Daniel and me. She said, ‘Well, just because you don’t know the story doesn’t mean there’s not a plot.’ What kind of thing is that for a thirteen-year-old to say?”
“I don’t know anything about kids.”
“She thinks everything is a script for a movie.”
“She has a filmmaker for a father.”
“Oh yes, her father.” The way Adele said this, Abilene thought: It has something to do with blood.
“This last film of his.” Adele had fallen back into her chair. “It was sordid. Pretentious and violent. The critics let him tell them what it was about: a parable about revolution. Greece, Cuba, Africa. See? Relevant! The film is about betrayal, he had said. You should see it! There’s a girl in it, a young girl. She’s kidnapped, raped and murdered. This is parable? Who can argue that the world isn’t horrible? But why do they let him posture behind that? This was another romp with one of his child stars, violence reduced to teeny-bopper sexuality.” She took a long drink of water. “You don’t read magazines, do you? You don’t know about him. Child stars are his specialty. High school vamps. Child brides. Gangsters’ daughters. He exposes them, like the flesh of guavas cut open for inspection. There are plenty of people who don’t like it. Feminists. They picket his films and make him more famous. They give him weight. And they don’t even get the point. The girls are incidental, thrown to the public to pant over; the movies are about basic human savagery. The girls are vulnerable and yet inaccessible; they get caught in crossfires. They’re victims by chance; chance robs them of their meaning. Martyrs to no cause. It’s sick.”
“You’re bothered about the murdered girl because you don’t know why it happened? Do I get it, Adele?” It surprised Abilene, how easily she understood Adele’s worry, despite all the words. It surprised her more that Adele should care about such a thing, that anybody would care.
Adele nodded her head bitterly. “There has to be a reason.”
Abilene thought of bulls on their forelegs in the dust. Of thumb-sized babies in white enamel pans. Of love.
Adele said, “Yannis says there’s meaning in violence. He says it counts for something.” Rancor was in her voice. “He ought to know. He has explored it in life as well as art. Come here.”
They went into the main room. Adele scrabbled in a box and came up with a file folder. “This has nothing to do with Yannis,” she said, “but it has everything to do with violence.” She threw the folder on the table. Pictures spilled out: photographs of corpses, some of them laid out with flowers on their chests, others contorted in their last gazes. Some were just kids. One was a woman late in pregnancy, her huge belly like a hill above her.
“We don’t ask for these things. They come to us. Sometimes they come in the mail, or we find them outside our door. Sometimes they’re left for Daniel at the paper. Braver donors wait in the hallway to shove them into Daniel’s hands. These are always women. ‘Bless you for what you do,’ they tell him. What good does it do? Yet they feel better. Is the meaning not in violence but in numbers? Is the meaning in the record itself? Have they given Daniel a share of the grief, or the guilt? I tell you, Abilene, I can’t sleep, I lie awake and ask myself these things—”
“What does Daniel say?”
“I don’t ask him.”
She tapped a photograph, this one of the pregnant woman. She pulled out another picture, of two young boys lying on the ground in front of a building—boys anywhere from twelve to sixteen years old. “They were students, full of enormous foolish confidence, taking part in a lark, while all the while it was—oh your friend Hallie knew the phrase—it was serious business. These pictures are from the provinces. Officials have told Daniel, these pictures have to do with drug wars. Are we supposed to believe that? Oh, here are students. You wait. You’ll see them like this here, in the city.” She coughed hoarsely. “Lined up like tripe in a market stall, you’ll see them.”
“Adele—why are you so—so depressed?” She had forgotten her own agenda.
“Pola’s father makes death beautiful. What happens to its horror when he does that? Who believes in death anymore? Maybe that’s what the pictures are good for!” Adele was weeping now. “These damned kids. They don’t know who they’re dealing with. This isn’t California. If things get hot, girls like Hallie fly home. If she gets picked up, her daddy will come and bribe her way out. Even you’ve got someplace to go. But these damned kids, don’t they know what death looks like?” She gathered up the photographs and took them out of the room. When she returned she had wiped her face and composed herself.
Abilene had spent the moment wondering from what sorts of troubles Tonio would rescue her. It would be a very short list.
“I’m so worried about Pola,” Adele said. “She’s at the lycée in the mornings, but I can’t watch her all the rest of the time. She knows things are getting lively in the city, she hears rumors. She accuses me of not wanting her to have any fun!”
“Maybe I could spend some time with her.” Abilene hoped this was what Adele was wanting from her. It was easy enough; the girl intrigued her. “We could go to the movies now and then, a museum, that sort of thing.”
Adele seemed pleased. “Tomorrow Elena is taking her down to the theatre for a little tour. Another day, the movies with you—yes, that would help. Oh, I’m so glad you are in the city!” She was nodding, over and over.
“Don’t worry, Adele. She just needs something to do. She’s just a child.”
Adele looked sad and tired. “No one is a child like Pola.”
She picked up an allotment of money from Tonio the next morning. Constanzia smiled as if to show off her teeth. It was her way of pretending not to think she was superior.
In the elevator Abilene looked down at her feet and saw how old her heavy huaraches looked. She went into the first shoe store she came to and bought an expensive pair of Italian sandals. They took almost all her money. The clerk handed her her old shoes in a bright yellow plastic bag. All through the transaction he smiled at her. So too the clerk at the register, a skinny woman in a scarlet shift. Abilene left the store with their faces in her mind. She knew as soon as she was gone their faces turned cold until the next customer came along. She hated the falseness, the fawning, not because it was false, not because it masked contempt—which it surely did—but because she didn’t know how to respond to it. Courtesy put her off guard. Most things did. She was twenty-five years old and she didn’t know how to get along with anyone.
She and Hallie went from the museum down the street to a pleasant cafe. They drank Cinzanos and talked. Bits of information fell from Hallie like so much lint. She had travelled in Europe, Mexico, and South America. She spent her last year of high school in Argentina, where an aunt worked for the American embassy. She had a cousin trekking in Nepal. She studied art. She was thinking of joining SDS in Berkeley, or of going to Ohio to live with her grandmother. “They really need leadership there,” she said, as if Ohio were an undeveloped country.
“Do you have a boyfriend in Berkeley?” Abilene asked. It was the only reasonable question she could think of.
Hallie smiled. She had had lovers, she said, and, remembering them, she laughed at them and herself too. Going away to school had been like tumbling down a long slope of pillows. She loved school, she loved boys, and she loved the movement. Fortunately, she’d found they went together, so far.
She asked about Abilene, who told a little about Tonio: that he was a rancher and a businessman. That he was away for some of the summer. She was vague. “I’m just doing what I want—”
“Well yes! That’s what you must do!” Hallie said; she seemed to think they were speaking of important things.
&nbs
p; “You know, I’m not a student radical,” Abilene said pleasantly. “I’m not even a student!”
Hallie was being earnest again. “What hasn’t hit you, Abby, is the anger. It’s anger that sweeps you clean. I envy you, to come to the movement so fresh! It’s virgin anger, it will wash over you, sudden, instead of seeping up, like it did for me.”
“What is the anger for?” Abilene asked, to humor her.
“Why, for the persecuted and the poor.”
“What about me? What if it’s me I’m angry about? If I’ve had a bad time of it myself?” She wasn’t certain why she was trying to provoke Hallie, but she wasn’t going to base their friendship on something so false as shared dedication to good causes!
“Anger sweeps you clean,” Hallie said.
Abilene thought maybe Hallie would take her on as a project. People were always doing that.
Hallie asked, “Your Tonio. Is he like other rich men—cold and powerful?”
“He’s a sultan and a magician and a shark. He would really love you.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that!”
Abilene knew Hallie did mean that. Somehow that helped.
They rode a bus out to University City. On the way Hallie told Abilene about her boyfriend Refugio, son of a baker. She said, “He’s sweet and good, and he kisses me with his mouth closed.” This made Abilene smile. “Are you hoping for more?” she asked.
“Oh no. Refugio is icing. The cake is what he’s part of—the movement here. You’ll see. And maybe you will meet someone—yes, of course, you must meet Gato. He’s older, mysterious. He would challenge you! He would keep you on your toes!”
“Another student radical? What would we have in common?”
“He’s the real thing, Abby.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know a word for it. He’s not a kid. He’s not confused about what he believes. He’s so sure. He can be ruthless, you can tell. And he has this quality—charisma! The students really listen to him. He tells them to study ideology and strategy, and wait for the right moment.” She seemed very pleased with herself to have remembered all that about Gato.
Abilene asked if he was sexy.
Hallie liked this. “Oh yes, he is! And he doesn’t have any special girl as far as I know. He’s always in groups, like a pied piper. Actually, I don’t think he’d be any good at all at sex. He probably couldn’t maintain attention. He has his mind on other things.” She paused to search for a word. “He is a visionary.”
“What does he see?” Abilene knew what the answer would be.
“Revolution, of course.”
To Abilene’s dismay, the word stirred her.
“Oh damn!” Abilene said as they went into a building. “I’ve laid my old shoes down somewhere and lost them.” Her new sandals were rubbing blisters. They tried to think back to when she had last had the shoes. She was sure she hadn’t left them in the cafe; she thought she remembered them bouncing against her leg on the bus.
“Come on, come on,” Refugio said to Abilene and Hallie. “We’re starting.” He led them down a hallway to a classroom where students were crowded in and everyone was talking. In a moment someone whistled and the room quieted down. “Don’t speak,” Refugio whispered. “And stay near the door.” He left them and went into the crowd.
A man spoke in a soft, compelling voice. He was wearing jeans and a corduroy jacket, a tie loosened at his neck. Abilene noticed immediately the lack of intensification, of embellishment, in his speech. It was like he was saying, this is too important to exaggerate. He was talking about change and about how he had been waiting for it.
“When I was your age,” he said, “I dreamed about a true revolution. Now I see you hope and dream this same dream. That dream is the heart of the movement. It will beat so loud and strong in the plazas and streets, in the hearts of our people.”
A young man stood up and asked, “So you are joining us?”
“I don’t have to join! I’m from Poli. I’m from a worker’s family. I was born into the movement.”
“What do we do?” students shouted.
“Meet with your friends, and then meet with your rivals. Forget your petty differences of ideology, and unite in a common purpose. Vallejo is still in prison. Repression lies like a fog over us. Remember the strength is in solidarity. You must learn to talk to workers and peasants. The movement belongs to us all.”
“To Puebla and Juarez!”
“To Cuba and Vietnam!”
“Teachers!”
“Students!”
“Workers!”
“Che! Che!”
The teacher had begun to cry. Tears made his long lashes shiny. He put his hands up and pointed his fingers toward his temples like pistols. “They cannot silence me with fear! I will not let my gray hairs make me weak!”
The shouts began. The true revolution is still to come! The government is run by mummies!
The speaker waited for them to die down and then he spoke at last in the full fervor of a Mexican in love with a cause. “I will never stand apart from students. This is my fight and yours, my wife’s fight, and my children’s. It is the people’s fight!”
Cheers went up in the room. A dark boy with Indian features stood and spoke with the piping voice of a child. “It’s time to listen to the voices of the peasants,” he said loudly. He raised his arm and saluted with his fist.
“He’s just a baby!” Abilene whispered to Hallie.
“Death to the government liars!” someone shouted.
A tall young man called out, “We cannot kill the government! We must free it from the bankers’ prison, from the barbed fences of imperialist North America, from the false god of capitalism. We are not granaderos, to come in the night with pistols and clubs. We are not corrupt or frightened. We are the true patriots!”
A girl jumped onto a chair. “We won’t make revolution in this room, talking about it!” she shouted. “We won’t make revolution by fearing blood! We will make revolution in the streets, where the people are.” Her long black hair hung in two fat braids over her shoulders. “We must organize for battle. We must form brigades.”
“Organize!” someone challenged. “Tell us about it! Will we become our own government, another university? Organization is the blood line of lies and bribes.”
“Each of us is no better than a rock thrown at a window!” the young woman retorted. “One by one they are taking us off the streets. They can gag us and bind us and rape us. They can lock us away in prison. And, one by one, the people will not know! But together—” She paused dramatically. All the others had been silenced by the power of her speech. “Together we are too strong. Together, in brigades, we are soldiers in a fight for liberation!”
Hallie whispered to Abilene. “I see her everywhere. Her name is Carolina. She lives far away, near Teotihuacan. Refugio says she leaves home before dawn, carrying tortillas for her breakfast. She was studying to become an engineer, but now all her work is for the movement.”
Carolina stepped off her chair and the other students gathered around her and embraced her.
Refugio called out from the front of the room. “Watch the boards for notices! Talk to your friends!”
Carolina called out: “Be brave and tireless.”
“Isn’t she—neat!” Hallie said.
Suddenly everyone was talking at once. Hallie nudged Abilene, and together they went outside and leaned against the building. They were breathing deeply, like two runners. Abilene felt blood at her temples. Her heart raced, and lower, she felt a dampness, an impatience. She felt longing.
To Adele, later, she said, “It really is exciting, isn’t it? Not that I understand it, of course.”
Adele’s face was drawn and pale. “Oh no, it’s not exciting. It’s frightening. Last night Daniel sat up in the middle of the nigh
t, sat up in bed like his name had been called. ‘What is it?’ I asked. I thought he was ill. ‘I’ve got to start a second copy,’ he said, and lay back down. I tell you, something is swelling beyond all space. The other day I came around the corner and there were small boys scuffling. One of them was knocked down and I heard him say, ‘I’ll call the army, you bastard! I’ll tell them you are dirty Fish like Paco’s father! I’ll see you in prison, you black dirty Communist.’ I ask you, Abilene, if it is so big and getting bigger—can we stay out of the way?”
ABILENE DREAMED of the murdered Sylvia Britton. She knew how it might have happened: the woman taunting a Mexican youth, to turn his insults back on him; his sudden violent anger; a blow, to stifle the humiliation.
Tacho had warned her: You American girls. You shouldn’t play games with us. Not with Mexican men. Don’t think we are stupid because we are not your kind.
Abilene woke, drank a little gin and water, and after, slept without dreams.
She went to see Adele in the morning. “You and Daniel are professionals,” she argued. “Don’t you want to know what happened?”
Adele said they would ask the hotelkeeper, Javier Piñeda, to call if anyone came looking for Sylvia Britton. She acted to help Abilene, but she was philosophical and distant. “All around me I see violence and death. It makes it harder if you give a victim a name.”
Adele asked after the hotelkeeper’s son Nando, whom Daniel had once befriended. Piñeda said his son had not learned his lesson well enough; Nando had his head in the clouds.
Adele shook Piñeda’s hand. “You will call?” she asked again.
Piñeda regarded the two women with exasperation and wonder. “She was killed by the night, Señora. She is one of many.”
There were more dreams. Abilene told Adele, “A woman comes out of the dark, under a street lamp. A taxi approaches, and she waves for it to stop. The driver gives her the finger and calls out, ‘Hey, gringa whore!’”
Adele laughed. “There’s nothing frightful about that, Abby. When did it ever kill you to be called a gringa whore?”
Gringa Page 11
