Tarnished Beauty

by Cecilia Samartin

  Jamilet opened the front door and called out, “Tía, I’m home. I’ll get dinner started right away.” There was no answer. She knocked softly on the bathroom door, and it swung open to reveal an empty tub.

  A rush of cold fear shot through Jamilet, all at once, as she rushed to Carmen’s room, and flung open the door, not bothering to knock. Carmen was lying on her bed with eyes half open and a letter resting on her chest. Jamilet didn’t need to look to know it was the court summons. She took firm hold of her aunt’s shoulders and shook her soundly. “Tía,” she shouted. “Tía, wake up, Tía!” Carmen didn’t move or blink, and her eyes remained perpetually drowsy, looking at nothing and no one. Only a thin line of spittle dribbled out of the corner of her mouth as an empty pill container dropped off the bed to the floor.

  Jamilet slapped her aunt’s face while shouting at her, almost choking on her own screams and trying to calm the wicked fear raging through her like a storm. She slapped her aunt’s face until it was red, and until her hands were wet with her aunt’s saliva. Frantic with the knowledge that she was dead or dying, Jamilet ran out of the front door and into the street in a bewildered state. “Eddie, you have to come!” she shouted. She called out in Spanish too and in English again, her voice nearly shrieking. And she was trembling so violently that she couldn’t be sure if he’d heard her, so she continued screaming for him in English and Spanish. It seemed to her that she was screaming for close to an hour before he came, although later he’d tell her it was only seconds.

  Somehow she managed to explain what had happened and Eddie ran into the house before she could finish. He shook Carmen’s shoulders as Jamilet had, but even more roughly, so that her neck and shoulders bounced off the bed. There was no response. He instructed Jamilet to call the fire department, and as she did so he crouched over Carmen and began breathing into her mouth, deep breaths that caused her chest to rise and fall. Over and over again he did this, and every now and then he put his ear to her mouth, and then resumed breathing into her as if the earth would stop spinning if he didn’t. He stopped only once to tell Jamilet to go outside and wait for the ambulance.

  When the paramedics arrived, they pushed Eddie aside. Jamilet watched, dazed, from the doorway as several uniformed men cut off Carmen’s clothes with large shears. Underneath she wore a matching set of bright red panties and bra—Louis’s favorites. Carmen always complained about how uncomfortable they were, but joked that a woman needed to make sacrifices for her man if she hoped to keep him around.

  “Is she dead?” Jamilet asked Eddie, who was panting softly.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  One of the men inserted a long tube down Carmen’s throat, while another tried to put a needle into her arm, but he couldn’t find a vein through the fat. Eventually he had to stick the needle in her hand. Together, the men lifted her from the bed and onto the gurney. It occurred to Jamilet that Tía would hate to be sleeping while so many young men hovered over her practically naked body, but still her eyes remained vacant, neither open nor closed.

  A quivering sensation grew strong in Jamilet’s legs and she swayed a bit and leaned against the wall. One of the paramedics asked her if she planned to ride along in the ambulance, but she didn’t answer until he asked her a third time, and then she turned to Eddie.

  “I think you should,” he said.

  “Will you come with me?”

  He hesitated and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I can’t,” he said. But he waited on the street and watched as Carmen was wheeled outside and put into the back of the ambulance, and once Jamilet had climbed in after her, the ambulance drove off to County General.

  Three mornings in a row had been gray. The fog clung to the sidewalks, the houses, and the trees in a chilling embrace. It was difficult for Jamilet to be alone in the house. The quiet was the worst part. Even with the traffic buzzing outside, people calling to one another, planes rumbling up in the sky, the space in the house muffled the life outside with its thick, smothering silence. Sometimes it was difficult for Jamilet to breathe; it was as if she were inhaling the silence into her lungs and even the beating of her heart slowed to a lethargic pace.

  In only a few days, the sink had piled up with dishes and the beds were unmade. Carmen’s last beer can was still on her bedside table. It was nothing close to the calamity Jamilet had walked into when she first arrived, but the stench in the sink was a reminder that it was headed in the same direction. Before long the malodorous invisible thread would be pungent enough to follow her into the bedroom and haunt her through the night, but for now it was enough to close the door, close her eyes, and forget. Tomorrow after work she’d clean it up. She’d missed three days already and had no doubt that certain difficulties would be waiting for her. Each day she’d called to say that a family emergency prevented her from going in, Ms. Clark received her excuse with silence followed by measured questions about the expected length of her absence. It was apparent that Ms. Clark had heard such excuses before, and was not moved to pity or curiosity, but kept an eye on the practicality of replacement. On the third day, she was put on hold and Nurse B. came to the phone.

  “This is highly irregular,” she said. “What kind of family emergency are you dealing with, Monica?”

  “My aunt is sick and in the hospital,” Jamilet answered. “If I’m not there, she gets upset.”

  Nurse B. breathed hard, surges of air blowing in and out of the receiver as though she were jumping rope, but she was winded only by her upset. “If you don’t report to work by tomorrow morning, I’ll be forced to hire another replacement. When there is a change in his routine your patient becomes….” She paused and made a gurgling sound deep in her throat. “He becomes detestable,” she said.

  Jamilet promised that she’d be there, and tried to settle her mind to sleep by reminding herself that she was no longer dealing with Carmen on her own. Louis was back, and in some ways it was better than before. He’d rushed to the hospital after hearing rumors circulating at Chabelita’s Bar about Carmen’s suicide attempt. He was at the bedside when after almost twelve hours of a deep, deathlike sleep, Carmen finally woke up. His were the first eyes she looked into, and they held each other as they wept for some time after that. Louis proclaimed to Carmen and everyone who came into the room—nurses, doctors, the janitorial staff—that this was the woman he loved, and that he was prepared to stop living a lie. He promised Carmen and Jamilet that when his wife returned, he’d inform her as well, and marry Carmen, as he should have years ago.

  “Don’t wait, tell her now,” Carmen said when she was feeling stronger.

  “I don’t want to tell her when she’s so worried about getting home, but don’t worry, my little flower,” Louis said. “I’m saving money to bring them over, but it’s going to take me a while. It’s four of them, you know.”

  “How much you need?” Carmen asked.

  Louis’s eyes glanced up to the ceiling as he did the calculations in his head. “Oh, I figure about…,” he closed one eye. “…two or three thousand.”

  “Shit!” Carmen said, bringing her hand down and splattering a good deal of orange juice on the sheets. “You’ll be dead and buried before you save that kind of money. Hell,” she went on, “I’ll be dead and buried.”

  Louis said nothing and took her hand to his cheek. Carmen shrugged happily when she normally would have found reason to argue and complain. She had her man back and for the moment that was all that mattered.

  Even so, Jamilet wasn’t able to let go of her worries for Carmen quite so easily. She couldn’t be sure how long her aunt would be satisfied with the present arrangement Louis had proposed. Carmen’s brand of satisfaction wasn’t the lingering kind that ran deep, strengthened by faith and long-suffering patience. It lasted about as long as a good joke stayed amusing, and Carmen wasn’t one to keep laughing for long.

  Señor Peregrino’s room was in disarray—laundry scattered all over the floor, and trays from the previous day’s mea
ls stacked in one corner, dripping from one level to the next like a gritty fountain left to years of decay. Señor Peregrino didn’t turn from his desk when Jamilet stepped in and over the obstacles on the floor in order to place the breakfast tray on his bedside table.

  By now an expert at walking silently in her hard-soled shoes, Jamilet drifted between the various piles on the floor, organizing the laundry as best she could.

  She was making relative progress when he spoke gruffly without turning around. “Leave it,” he said. Jamilet jumped and dropped the bundle of clothes she held.

  “I told you yesterday,” he continued sternly. “You are not to touch anything in my room, do you understand?”

  “Excuse me, Señor,” Jamilet said. “You never told me that.”

  Upon hearing Jamilet’s voice, Señor Peregrino spun around, the legs of his chair screeching across the cement floor. He looked at her as if she were a dead relative come to life: overjoyed at first, but then his eyes narrowed and the line of his mouth stiffened into a neat little scowl. “So, you decided to return, did you?”

  “My aunt was ill, Señor.”

  “Look at this place,” he said, flinging both arms out at once. “Look at the filth I’ve had to endure.”

  “I’m sorry, Señor. I thought they’d send someone else until I came back.”

  “They’re all idiots!” he declared. “I can’t take time to train each and every fool who comes through here. It was difficult enough training you, and you’re less foolish than the average idiot.”

  Still in his pajamas, Señor Peregrino stood and stretched, as though waking from a long and restful sleep. A fine growth of beard mottled his chin and jaw with a silver haze. “I’ll be showering presently,” he announced. “And when I’m finished, I expect to find the bed made, the floor cleared, and every one of those foul trays out of my sight. Then,” he continued with an elegant half bow, “I’ll take my breakfast in bed, after which we’ll resume your lessons. And, if you’re lucky, I may have a mind to continue with my story after lunch.”

  “Very well, Señor,” Jamilet said. “And you’ll be wanting your linens changed as well?”

  He was heading for the bathroom. “Yes, and call down for another pot of coffee. This one will be cold by the time I’m ready for it. And…and be sure they make enough for both of us.”

  “Of course, Señor.” Jamilet smiled to herself as she proceeded to separate the laundry on the floor.

  But Señor Peregrino lingered in the doorway of the bathroom, and then addressed her in a softer voice. “I…I didn’t think you were coming back,” he said. “You should know that an old man like me is prone to worry.”

  Jamilet looked up from her work into eyes that were filled with tenderness, and felt a small ball of joy well up in her throat, warm and brooding, like a dormant seed that had refused to sprout and was now beginning to rattle with life. She swallowed hard on it for fear it might choke her. She could have told him that she’d been worried about him too, and that she’d wondered who was looking after him. But she thought better of it, and tightened the muscles around her eyes, brimming with tears, as she continued separating the laundry with impatient jerks this way and that. She even managed a weary sigh. “You know I’d never leave without my papers, Señor. And there’s so much work to be done, I really don’t see how I’ll have time to listen to your story today.”

  He exploded with a resounding, “Ha!” and tried to sound bitter, but his good humor overcame him. “You’d get three or four times the work done if it meant a chance to hear more of my story, and you know it.”

  Jamilet smiled. There was no need to further validate what both of them knew.

  Two steaming cups of coffee, one with plenty of cream and sugar, were waiting at the bedside once the morning chores had been completed. The trays and clothes had been moved into the corridor and still needed to be taken downstairs, but the room was spotless and the linens on the bed crisp. Jamilet opened the window and the midmorning sun stretched across the room like a soft golden arm, beckoning them to sit and meditate upon the warmth of its embrace.

  Freshly shaven, and smelling of powder and soap, Señor Peregrino took both the coffee cups to his desk. Together they sat sipping, and watching the fine dust Jamilet had disturbed in her cleaning frenzy drift about like miniature stars between the light and shadow of the room.

  “This time I remember where I left off,” Señor Peregrino announced with certain pride.

  Jamilet peered at him through the steam rising from her cup. She too remembered, but said nothing.

  “I had managed to annoy Jenny as much as she had annoyed me by refusing to tell her the reason Tomas and Rosa were masquerading as brother and sister. Yes,” he said. “I was quite pleased with myself until I realized that Jenny was capable of much more than annoyance.” Señor Peregrino lifted the steaming pot toward her. “More coffee?” he asked, as though they were sitting in a fine parlor or sidewalk café.

  “Yes, please,” Jamilet said, and she held out her cup so that Señor Peregrino could refill it. Then she closed her eyes, listened to the trance-inducing melody of his voice, and felt that she was floating, much like the dust particles surrounding them. Perhaps it was the result of the two heaping teaspoons of sugar in her coffee and nothing else, but she doubted it.

  Evening descended like a soft, dark shroud over León. In the small square where we stayed, candlelight wavered in every window and the space appeared as though haunted by shadows that moved with their own life. I’d spent most of the afternoon sitting at the same table and worrying about anything and everything imaginable. How was I to manage Jenny for the remainder of the journey? Was Tomas capable of losing his mind over Rosa? Every day that passed rendered him less and less like the man I’d known when we left our home a lifetime ago. And then there was my greatest worry—when would Andres make his move? For I had no doubt that he’d make it. He appeared to be a man of cunning who was not so foolish as to allow his passions to rule him indiscriminately. Instead they simmered in his soul, motivating and scheming a treacherous plan.

  I had forewarned Tomas of Andres’s presence and he was delighted that this would afford him the opportunity to play the role of endearing brother more convincingly than ever. As they crossed the square together arm in arm, the breath caught in my throat. She wore a simple dress and her dark hair was in a thick braid down her back, with no other adornment except the emerald of her eyes. Even the crickets were silenced, in awe.

  Tomas interrupted his pompous entrance with a few nervous glances about the square as he looked for Andres. No doubt he’d told Rosa that Andres was near. There was a halted smile on her lips, but unlike Tomas, she dared not look about and invite a greeting that might lead to something else.

  “Won’t Jenny be joining us?” she asked when she saw me sitting alone at the table.

  “I’m sure she’ll be along shortly.”

  “Good,” she said, smiling genuinely this time. “When Jenny is in our company, my heart feels lighter somehow.”

  “She does have a unique way about her,” I said, pouring wine all the way around. Jenny joined us shortly thereafter. She looked decidedly pretty, her hair as shiny as bright copper and her eyes gleaming with perpetual delight. She prattled on about her desire for a warm bath and a soft bed, but was silenced by the expression of panic and horror that had suddenly registered on Rosa’s face.

  We heard his boots pounding on the wooden floor before we saw him. Tomas took firm and possessive control of Rosa’s hand while Jenny’s eyes glittered over the rim of her glass, like a child anticipating a fine game.

  Andres bowed to us all, but his eyes were fixed on Rosa’s face, which betrayed only the discomfort of being adored so brazenly.

  “It is a lovely evening,” Andres said, forcing his gaze to sweep over the rest of us.

  “I agree,” Jenny replied, then she turned to me. “Don’t you think it a fine night for a dance, Antonio? Tomas tells me that you’re a ve
ry good dancer.”

  “Perhaps,” I returned.

  “So you’re a dancer, are you?” Andres asked, momentarily distracted from his adoration of Rosa.

  “I’ve been known to enjoy a dance from time to time.”

  “I’m sure you’ve seen your brother’s friend dance many times,” Andres said, directing his conversation to Rosa. “Can you suspend your sisterly bias long enough to tell me if he’s any good?”

  “He is spectacular,” Rosa said, meeting Andres’s questioning gaze with unusual conviction of her own.

  He was apparently delighted to hear as much, and brought his hand down to the table with a resounding thud. “Then we will dance,” he declared loudly, and then stood. “There are musicians about who’ll oblige us, I’m sure.”

  Jenny clapped her hands excitedly, but what came out of her mouth next almost stopped my heart. “Oh, this is wonderful, Rosa,” she said loudly, leaning forward and squeezing her arm. “But why does the gentleman refer to Tomas as your brother when he is no more your brother than mine? Is he referring to the fraternity implied by our pilgrimage? For if he is, then we’re all one big happy family, are we not?”

  The color drained from Rosa’s face, so much so that it paled even next to Andres’s white-gloved hand that he lifted to point at her and Tomas. “You are not brother and sister?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” Jenny answered, bouncing in her chair with every word. “They’re playing a silly game, although no one will tell me why.” Her face crinkled up in a smile that grew stiff and awkward as she waited for a response from someone, but there was only silence.

  Finally Rosa spoke up. “We didn’t intend to cause you offense, sir.”

  “I have no doubt, my dear lady,” he said, “that you could convince a bird to stop flying and a fish not to swim if only for the knowledge that it would please you. I am not immune to your charms, but neither am I a bird or a fish.” That said, he stood and left the table without another word.