The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos

by Margaret Mascarenhas

“You must have been a dancer in your past life!” exclaimed José Naipaul, clapping wildly when she finished, and her mother had grabbed her in her arms and kissed her many times all over her face.

  She had always been able to bring a smile to her mother’s face when she danced. “You’ve got both Andalusia and Carib in your blood,” Marta would say. But whenever her mother thought too much of her father, not even Luz’s dancing could lighten her mood.

  Even now, Luz loves to dance, especially salsa and merengue. When the music begins, she feels electrified, as though there is a lightning rod that begins at the top of her head and ends at her toes, illuminating and energizing her core.

  Brava! Brava! Miguel Rojas would shout, when they were first married, spinning her triumphantly across the floor as her skirts flew up above her thighs. On the dance floor, Luz is a goddess and she knows it. Dancing is the only thing she is positive she can do better than Lily.

  Competition with Lily has been the monkey on Luz’s back for most of her life. Nothing really bad ever happens to Lily; it has always been enough for her to look lovely and fragile, for everyone to rally around her. This is the way it has been as long as Luz can remember. Granted, Lily might have hurt or lost her baby after the fall, which would have been horrible. But, Luz wonders, if the situation were reversed, and it were Luz’s baby, Luz who needed comforting and mollycoddling, would everyone come running? Would Lily? Luz has her doubts.

  Lily certainly hadn’t come to her defense that time at the Hotel Macuto, had she? No, she had been so concerned about saving her own skin and the skin of her kleptomaniac friend, Irene Dos Santos. You can’t tell anybody, please, Lucecita, I beg you, Lily had said, while Irene stood by, wary and silent like a cat, her small, bottle-green eyes hooded by dark lashes. It makes her positively ill to think of the way Lily always would get that cajoling, sugary sweetness in her voice when she wanted Luz to tow the line.

  For a long time, even though the sheer force of her jealousy sometimes made it hard for her to breathe, Luz could not resist the desire to be loved by Lily. But Lily had never loved Luz that way, not the way she loved Irene, like a sister and confidant, a coconspirator in their exclusive adolescent club of discovery. Even afterward, even after Luz had presented her with the evidence that Irene was not a good friend, Lily had never turned to Luz. And when Irene drowned in Maquiritare, had Lily reached toward Luz? No, not even then. On the contrary, she had increased her distance. And for this, Luz has never quite forgiven her.

  Luz was happiest after Lily joined her at the convent boarding school as the penalty for sticking her tongue in a boy’s mouth while in the elevator. Not only because she had Lily mostly to herself for two whole years, not even because it meant separation from Irene Dos Santos, but because she felt it made them equals. Except during the holidays, when they returned to Lily’s home, and she slept in the maid’s room with her mother, where they resided at the pleasure of Lily’s parents. Sometimes Luz pretended Lily’s parents were her own and that her own mother was her maid.

  “The maid will sign for it,” she would say disdainfully to the postman whenever a registered letter arrived.

  The first time Luz and Lily returned from the boarding school in Valencia was for Semana Santa. They were both fourteen. Consuelo embraced them both warmly at the door, took them by the arm, and pulled them into the kitchen, where Ismael, who had just returned from Maquiritare with fresh, handmade paintbrushes for his wife, was having his merienda. Ismael offered his face to Lily’s kiss, a face that reflected pure joy at the sight of her, with eyes alight in a way that made Luz momentarily queasy with envy. Until he turned to her and said, “How beautiful you look, Luz, almost a woman. Soon we will have to contend with suitors beating at your door.”

  Luz blushed. Ever since she was little, Ismael had made her feel like the prettiest girl in the world.

  “Can you keep a secret, Lucecita?” Lily asked, when they were alone in her room.

  “Of course I can, don’t be silly,” said Luz with a forced laugh that thinly disguised her irritation.

  “Okay,” said Lily, “tomorrow morning, I’m going to tell Mami that we’re going to the Hotel Macuto to sunbathe. Papi can drive us there.”

  “Right, so what’s the secret?”

  “Bueno, the thing is, I’m supposed to be meeting Irene, and my parents don’t know. I haven’t seen her since I changed schools, and I really want to see her. If you come with me, I won’t have to lie—Mami always knows if I’m lying, don’t ask me how, but she does. This way, it’ll look normal if I say I’m going to the Macuto with you.”

  So that was the reason Lily had been so jittery! Luz was torn between feeling flattered and feeling abused at being made complicit in such a scheme. But in the end, the allure of partnership trumped her fear of collusion in a plan that could surely ignite the wrath of her mother and Lily’s parents.

  “Do you have a tanga?” Lily asked.

  “No,” said Luz, embarrassed. Her mother didn’t allow her to wear the skimpy Brazilian bathing suits all the young city girls wore. But Lily wears them, she had complained. Well, you’re not Lily and you’re not going to, punto final, Marta had said. Luz had thrown her own unfashionable suit in the trash, preferring to own no bathing suit at all to making a fool of herself in front of other girls her age.

  “That’s okay,” said Lily, “you can borrow one of mine.”

  The next morning, Ismael drove the girls to the Macuto. “Have a good time, muchachas, and call me when you’re ready to come home,” he said, pressing several hundred-bolívar notes into each of their hands.

  “Gracias, Papi,” said Lily, kissing her father on the cheek, before he drove away.

  They found Irene waiting by the pool in her bathing suit, a fluorescent peach-colored tanga that enhanced her tan and showcased her streamlined torso, the perfect flat plane of her stomach, the sensuous curve of her full traffic-stopping breasts. Her long, straight hair was caught up in a simple but elegant twist and clipped nonchalantly in a way that Luz had often tried but which never worked because her neck was too short. The only physical feature Luz shared with Irene was a large and shapely bosom. Unlike Luz, who had been programmed by nine years of convent school to keep them under wraps, Irene flaunted hers, rubbing them with suntan oil repeatedly while three young, goggle-eyed waiters swirled about her.

  As soon as Irene caught sight of Lily, she ran to embrace her with a squeal and kissed her four times on each cheek, making exaggerated smacking noises each time. “I’ve got a room, courtesy of the manager, who’s a friend of my mother. Here’s the key. Hurry up and change, Lily, the boys will be here any minute.” Then, “Luz! How nice that you were able to make it.” But Luz didn’t believe that Irene was any happier to see her than she was to see Irene.

  While Lily and Luz changed into their bathing suits, Luz said, “What did Irene mean by ‘the boys’?”

  “Luz,” said Lily, “don’t be a pendeja. What is the point of coming to the Macuto, putting on our bathing suits and lying around like wallflowers for the benefit of the waiters? Do you realize I haven’t been near a boy for two whole years? I’m parched! But don’t worry, I called ahead and asked Irene to arrange a boy for you too.” Luz still remembers thinking that if it weren’t for the overpowering influence of Irene, Lily would never have spoken in this way. Pretending to be so grown up and boy crazy. Parched. ¡Qué ridícula! Who did she think she was talking to?

  As Lily hurriedly stuffed towels and suntan lotions into a tote, saying, “Let’s go, let’s go,” Luz’s heart began to hammer in her chest. She felt fat. Unsophisticated. Boring. What if the boy Irene had chosen for her didn’t like her? And worse, what if her mother ever found out that she’d been preening around the Macuto half-naked with a boy? It could happen; the Macuto was a social center, hardly a place of discretion. How typical of Irene to choose a venue fraught with the danger of discovery. Wasn’t it bad enough that Lily had been forced to change schools because of Irene? What wa
s Lily thinking? They could all get in trouble. But if she backed out now, Lily and Irene would say she was coward, a prude, a complete pajuda. They would laugh at her behind her back and Lily would ignore her for the rest of Semana Santa. Maybe even for the rest of the year. Her thoughts raced frantically from one ghastly scenario to another, all of which ended horribly.

  When the girls returned to the poolside, the boys had already arrived. To Luz it was immediately apparent from his possessive perch on Irene’s lounge chair that the one with the distinctive Guajiro cheekbones was taken. “This is Moriche Sanchez,” said Irene, patting him on the head like a favored pet. “He used to love my mother, until he met me. We’re going to open a restaurant together; I’ve decided I want to be a chef. Moriche, meet my best friend Lily Martinez. And this is Luz...what’s your last name?”

  “Galano,” mumbled Luz.

  “Mucho gusto,” said Moriche, without offering his hand or taking his sly eyes off Irene. Luz guessed that he must be around twenty-two years of age. He was not handsome, though by no means repulsive; he reminded her of a hawk with his long beak of a nose. Luz recalled then that Lily had mentioned Irene’s peculiar taste in boys, she said that even though Irene could have anyone she wanted with a snap of her fingers, she had always gone for odd-looking, sometimes even ugly, types. Boys who were also quite a bit older than herself. Boys who were men. According to Lily, Irene had once tried to sell her on the idea of men who were not in conformance with conventional good looks, but Lily’s sense of aesthetic had recoiled at the idea.

  “That’s why we’re never in competition,” Lily had explained to Luz.

  “And these two hombres,” said Irene, nodding in the direction of the other two young men, “are Elvis Crespo, who has been caliente for Lily ever since he kissed her in the elevator of my building, and Elvis’s friend and boss, Miguel Rojas, who, of course, is dying to meet you, Luz. He loves Cuban girls.”

  Smiling briefly and shyly at Miguel Rojas, Luz turned her focus on Elvis Crespo. So this was the elevator kisser. Elvis appeared much younger than the other two, and immediately Luz wished she were Lily so that she might claim this dark, compact boy with the wild hair and rascally smile that ignited an insurrection in her belly. Besides, she was sure Irene was being sarcastic when she said Miguel Rojas was dying to meet her.

  Elvis grabbed Lily in his arms, raised her in the air, and swung her, laughing, in a circle. Tearing her gaze away from Elvis, Luz smiled at Miguel Rojas and held out her hand politely. Miguel Rojas smiled back and shook her hand with mock gentlemanliness, but not in a mean or depreciating way. He wasn’t at all bad-looking, though she wasn’t crazy about his hair, which was too closely cropped for her taste. He was on the stocky side, but she did like the way his torso tapered smoothly from his broad shoulders to his hips. And he was also better dressed than the other two. Expensively dressed. Even though she couldn’t see his eyes through his Ray-Bans, Luz decided she could tolerate a day as Miguel Rojas’s date.

  “Let’s order some drinks and snacks,” said Miguel Rojas, when the boys returned from the changing room, all wearing boxer-style swim trunks. Signaling for the waiter, he said, “Three piña coladas for the girls, and three straight rums with lots of ice. And bring three plates of French fries.” Luz thought it rather imperious of him to just order without asking anyone what they wanted, but no one else seemed to mind, and as the day wore on and numerous orders were placed by Miguel Rojas and consumed by all, she realized that the reason no one had an opinion about what to eat or drink was because Miguel Rojas always paid for everything.

  After two piña coladas Luz found herself warming to the boy and also to the idea that he was rich. She closed her eyes and fantasized about dating Miguel Rojas, who would provide her, in the tradition of Cinderella stories, with everything her heart desired, much to the envy of other girls. Not that Luz had ever been treated as anything less than a full family member in the Martinez household, but the fantasy was too tempting to resist. After three piña coladas, she went into the pool, floated on her back and smiled provocatively at Miguel Rojas. When Miguel Rojas took the bait, swam up behind her, put his arms around her, and pulled her toward him, then turned and pressed her into a corner of the pool, she allowed his tongue to travel across her lips, and thought she might agree to marry him. After four piña coladas, she felt dizzy and headachy, and when Miguel Rojas offered to accompany her to the hotel room so she could lie down, she said yes.

  Luz had no idea how long she had been asleep when she felt a sideways yanking at the crotch of her bathing suit bottom. She thought she was dreaming. Cymbals crashed in her head each time she attempted to move it; her eyelids felt glued together with cement. She lay still even when she felt little bursts of pleasure on her stomach and realized that Miguel Rojas was kissing her there. Slowly, tantalizingly, he moved his lips lower, then lower. Her thighs tensed and Miguel Rojas repositioned himself, above her, kissing her wetly on the mouth, rubbing her gently with his finger where his lips had been earlier. By this time her pleasure was so intense, she could not have stopped Miguel Rojas from swirling his finger in her most private place, even if she had wanted to. But when he suddenly withdrew his finger and arched above her, driving a hard rod against that barred passage, pleasure turned into pain. Shrieking, she pushed at his chest.

  “Coño, a virgin,” said Miguel Rojas in a thick voice. Groaning, he abruptly pulled away. Then he was kneeling, upright, rubbing himself furiously with his hand, his neck arched back, his face towards the ceiling, his hips jerking, his knees digging into her hips. A gush of liquid, hot, wet and thick, spurted on her stomach.

  Luz was frightened. What if she got pregnant, was all she could think, as Miguel Rojas fell heavy and spent against her and the throbbing between her legs gradually subsided. She might as well kill herself if she were pregnant or her mother would do it for her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Luz politely, wondering how many would come to her funeral.

  “Sorry,” he said, wiping her stomach with the tail of his shirt, “you should have told me you were a virgin.” Then he lay down against her, sex shrunken and soft against her side, his rum-infused breath blowing against her ear. Luz did not move until he began to snore. Then, carefully moving his arm, which lay across her hips, aside, she stood up and went to the bathroom. She peered fearfully into the toilet bowl through her legs at the urine that burned its way out of her. She wet a hand towel and wiped her sticky stomach, with another she washed between her legs. Then she lay down flat on the bathroom floor with her left cheek pressed against the cool tiles, her arms straight out in front of her.

  Over an hour passed before she heard Irene banging at the bathroom door. “Open the door, Luz, te ruego,” Irene was shouting, “I have to use the bathroom.”

  When Luz opened the bathroom door, Irene was leaning on it so hard, she fell into Luz’s arms. Pulling back, Irene laughed and said, “My god, Luz, what happened to you? We thought you’d passed out from the booze in here.” Luz looked over Irene’s shoulder into the room. Miguel Rojas was gone.

  “Where is he?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Miguel Rojas.”

  “He’s down at the pool.”

  “He did it to me,” said Luz.

  “What? Who did what?”

  “Miguel Rojas. He did it while I was asleep.” She searched for the vocabulary to describe what Miguel Rojas had done. She had seen dogs mating. She had seen lovers dissolving in one another in soft focus on the TV. What Miguel Rojas had done had been nothing like either, but still she wanted to hold him accountable for something, for making her feel heavenly and filthy at the same time. There must be a word for it. She began to shake uncontrollably and her nose began to run as if she were having an allergic reaction.

  Irene was standing in the frame of the bathroom door, the light behind her, her face blackened by a shadow.

  “Luz, what did he do?” said Irene, wiping Lu
z’s nose with tissue, smoothening her hair, wrapping a towel around her shoulders, as if she were a mother soothing her child after a bad dream. Her fingers fluttered nervously around Luz’s face and hair like butterflies. Luz felt calmer when she focused on the feel of Irene’s fingers in her hair.

  “He showed me his thing.” She does not mention the disgusting glue on her stomach.

  “Luz,” said Irene, “tell me exactly what he did. What did he do after he showed you his thing?”

  “He put his tongue in my mouth.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes.” Luz thought of her mother finding out and began to cry again. “Do you think I’m going to have a baby? My mother is going to kill me,” she said. Her head still pounded from the aftereffects of too many piña coladas.

  “Stop it,” said Irene, “You’re not going to have a baby. Babies don’t come from tongues. Your mother is not going to find out anything unless you tell her.” With evident relief, Irene pulled down her bathing suit bottom and sat on the toilet. She looked at Luz and two stern lines appeared on her forehead. “God, Luz, Miguel’s a guy you barely know,” she said as she peed. “Who told you to come up to the room with him? What did you expect? He probably thought you knew what you were doing.”

  Luz hoped Irene would get wrinkles on her forehead. “Make them go,” she said. “Those boys, make them go.”

  Irene stared at her, as if sizing up the situation. “Okay,” she said finally. “Have a bath; you’ll be fine if you have a bath.”

  Luz showered, scrubbing herself almost raw with a pale blue pumice stone supplied by the hotel. When she emerged, a towel wrapped around her body, another around her head, Luz and Lily were sitting on the bed, conferring in lowered voices. They did not see her. There was no sign of Moriche Sanchez, Elvis Crespo, and Miguel Rojas. She went back into the bathroom and closed the door quietly. She put her ear to it.

  Irene was saying, “Look, she’s acting weird, and if she tells on us, there will be a lot of trouble all round. Mercedes has no idea I’m with Moriche, and if she finds out, she’ll tell my father out of pure spite, and he will kill me for sure. And you’ll probably have to become a nun.”