The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos

by Margaret Mascarenhas

  “Why didn’t you answer when so many were calling out for you?” Marta shouted, while the boys hung their heads and stared at the ground.

  “They had lost their watches in the game, and were afraid to come out until they had won them back,” said the policeman.

  Marta thanked the policeman, knelt down, and drew the boys into her arms, burying her face in their hair. “Never do that again,” she said. Then she raised her hand and whacked them, one after the other, on their cheeks, which turned strawberry red with the force of her delivery. Afterward, while Pepe pressed ice packs to the weeping boys’ cheekbones, and José began to prepare dinner, Marta went to her cupboard, withdrew the statue of San Antonio, gently untied him, and returned him to his rightful place on the altar in her bedroom. Then she sat on her bed, held her hands to her face, and wept with gratitude. She wept so long and so hard that by the time she returned to the living room, her nose had taken the shape of a potato, giving her a cartoonish appearance. Pepe had put on a record by Tito Puente and was dancing wildly with the boys. Marta allowed herself to be drawn into the middle of their mad gyrations and, with her hands on her hips, twirled and whirled around while José applauded from the door of the kitchen. By the time dinner was on the table, her nose had returned to its normal size, and the aromatic scent of José’s famous pasticho set her mouth watering.

  The following day, Marta allowed José Naipaul to give her a tattoo of Maria Lionza on her back. Her conversion was complete. The figures on the altar stand were increased by two: Maria Lionza and El Santo Niño de Atoche. Over the years they would swell to a battalion.

  “Your collection of religious iconography has multiplied tenfold,” observed her husband the last time she saw him. He told her he had been made the manager of the National Factory of Sanitary Fixtures in the city of La Esmeralda.

  “Then I can come home?” she asked.

  “Not yet, not yet,” he said. He seemed distracted. And later that night, while he panted and labored over her in yet another desperate farewell, she prayed to La Virgen de la Caridad to keep him safe.

  When she discovered she was pregnant, she hoped the baby would be a girl because she thought a girl would be less likely to ever become a revolutionary.

  Humberto Galano died in prison before Luz was born. He never saw his daughter. It was through her friends in Petare that Marta received the news that he had been executed as a traitor to the Revolution, several months after the execution occurred. He had refused to be blindfolded, they said. He died like a man, they said, their voices laden with pride. As though this was better than living like one.

  Six months pregnant, Marta walked to the liquor store down the street. She purchased a case of the cheapest rum and paid a delivery boy five Bolívares to carry it to her apartment. She drew the frayed curtains of all the windows and proceeded to get very, very drunk. Night and day, she sat in a chair by the darkened window, rousing herself briefly twice a day when the boys said they were hungry, reaching into her purse for the amount it would cost to buy two perros caliente at the kiosk next to the liquor store. This is how José found her after two weeks. Horrified, he packed Marta and the boys into his taxi and drove full speed to Sorte. Within twenty-four hours, Marta had been successfully weaned off alcohol by a clever Banco, who, after covering her belly with red cloth to protect the unborn child, prayed over her and forced her to drink rum “blessed by the Goddess” all day and all night without respite, waking her when she dozed and pouring it down her throat, refilling her stomach with it when she vomited. Until she had had enough rum to last her lifetime and beyond. It was the second time Maria Lionza had come to her aid, and she would not forget it. When she returned a few days later, her landlord was threatening eviction as her rent was over a month overdue. She applied for another housekeeping job and, despite her pregnancy, was hired by a cousin of President Marcos Perez Jimenez.

  Marta was not the sort to tell her problems to people she’d barely met, and she didn’t know what made her tell her new employers about her predicament with the rent and the pregnancy. But it was the right decision, because they immediately offered to advance the money. They even paid her hospital bill when she delivered a baby girl, whom she named Luz, a beacon shining out from the darkness of her loneliness.

  The following year, when the rent was suddenly raised exorbitantly, her employers helped her make arrangements to put the boys in boarding school in Valencia, and invited her, along with the baby, to live with them in their home.

  Although she felt appreciated and loved, although her existence and that of her children was secured, although she had a new country and a new life, she continued to quietly mourn Humberto. Her grief, at first a large, dark cloud that dimmed her senses, over the years condensed into a small black stone that settled, hidden but never forgotten, in her heart. And she never failed, once a week, to make an offering to the vengeful spirit of La Negra Primera, petitioning for the painful and humiliating demise of her husband’s executioner. Sooner or later, her petition would be heard, of that she was convinced. She would continue praying for that day to come until it did come.

  With the ouster of El Colonel, her employer, who had benefitted financially from his blood ties with the president, had fled to Spain, and she was forced to look for alternate employment. After several days of pounding the pavement, going door-to-door in the residential areas of the capital and hearing a series of no thank yous, she finally sat, exhausted and dejected, at an outdoor table outside the Panadería Sosa, wondering how on earth she was going to keep her children in boarding school. A woman holding a young girl by the hand, a child no older than Luz, who was five, approached her tentatively and smiled. “All the tables are taken,” she said. “Would you mind if we joined you?”

  “Please do sit down,” said Marta, smiling at the little girl.

  “I’m Lily,” said the child. “Don’t you think my name is pretty?”

  “It surely is,” said Marta.

  “Please allow me to buy you a coffee,” said Consuelo.

  An hour later, she had become an integral part of the Martinez household.

  Since her daughter married a millionaire, Marta no longer needs to work for anyone. Still, she can’t imagine leaving Lily. Luz doesn’t see why not. But hadn’t Consuelo and Ismael built a cottage for her in their very own garden, where she had lived with her family until the boys had joined the military and Luz had married?

  “All I’m saying is that you don’t have to work for them,” says Luz. “You could live in your own apartment and visit them whenever you like.”

  “No. I can’t live in my own apartment. What would I do there?” It isn’t as though Luz is offering to share her own flat and companionship. And who wants to cook for one?

  That enormous penthouse and all that money Luz got from Miguel Rojas, what good has it done her? is what Marta wonders. Luz doesn’t know that Marta has refused to accept a salary ever since the Quintanillas began having financial trouble, and Marta doesn’t plan to tell her. Luz gives her far more than she can spend, so where is the need of a salary? In fact, if Marta were Luz, she’d use the money to help those less fortunate—perhaps doing something for someone else once in a while would put a smile on her face. But no, she just lounges around, gobbling up chocolates and watching telenovelas half the day. Is she blind to the way people all over the country are struggling?

  Ay, Luz. Perhaps it is as the Banco of Maria Lionza once told her: in her bones, if not her mind, Luz knows that her mother had cursed her at birth.

  The truth is that her last, and what should have been her easiest, delivery almost killed her. Twelve hours after her water broke, she lay writhing on a cold metal table. Her legs, jammed into stirrups, trembled with fatigue, while her belly convulsed without end. In the brief moments between contractions, she could see José Naipaul’s face pressed white against the small rectangular window in the door to the delivery room.

  As her blood pressure mounted, so did her rage ag
ainst Humberto. He had done this abominable thing to her and left her to fend for herself. She swore to the white ceiling above her that she would have killed him herself if he had not already been dead. Dr. Campos, the hospital’s obstetrician, who was also a surgeon, conferred loudly with a nurse, as though Marta were not in the room, as though his voice did not need to compete with Marta’s screamed curses. Or at least she was trying to scream, but her throat was so parched that what emerged sounded more like the croaking of a frog.

  “Let’s move her to surgery,” said Dr. Campos.

  “Yes, Doctor,” said the nurse. And Marta wanted to kill her for having such a smooth, flat stomach, for even having the capacity of speech.

  “Why did you wait so long?” she gasped, as the nurse approached her.

  “Dr. Campos said he would prefer a natural delivery,” said the nurse.

  “Fuck Dr. Campos and his preferences. And fuck you. And fuck this brat who is trying to kill me,” growled Marta, just before she lost consciousness.

  “You always take up for her,” Luz said to Marta, on the day she turned nine and her mother made her share with Lily her American Barbie doll collection, which had grown to twenty, due to the largesse of José Naipaul. And, thinks Marta, perhaps it is true. Lily is not complicada, she does not baffle. Lily is like a serene, dark pool, with waters that rarely ripple. Marta’s relationship with Lily has always been unperturbed, easy, sane. Whereas with Luz, Marta has always felt she must be prepared for battle, to defend her position. Luz makes Marta feel like she must guess the weather of tomorrow and always be wrong.

  Marta has done the best she knows how with all her children. It isn’t that she doesn’t love Luz or that she wouldn’t walk through a thousand fires to save her were it ever necessary. It is just that...Marta can’t understand why Luz hoards her hurts as if they were treasures. The way she still holds a grudge about that doll, even though it was almost twenty years ago! Marta decides the reason she and her daughter cannot have a decent conversation is weariness, pure and simple. She is weary of Luz and her constant dredging up of what she considers to be her mother’s past misdeeds. She is tired of her judgments and blackmail, of her ceaseless barbs and unquenchable demands for validation twenty-four hours a day. She wants Luz to grow up and stop being mad at her brothers Juan Pedro and Jorge Luis for being born first. And now that Lily needs her family and friends more than ever, she wants Luz to give up her silly childhood rivalries. But instead, Luz is jealous. It seems to Marta that Luz is jealous of anything that isn’t about her.

  Gracias a la Reina Maria Lionza, the boys had never given Marta much trouble, except for the time they were lost. Even between the ages of twelve and seventeen, when their hormones rage out of control, the boys had been easier. Consuelo and Ismael had helped her put them through a government-subsidized boarding school, and they had grown up into strong and principled men without untoward incident, except for a few broken bones along the way, as with all young boys. Bones are easier to mend than hearts. Luz, well, it was as though she’d been born with a broken one.

  Marta loves her daughter. But she doesn’t always like her. That’s the truth of it, though she wishes it weren’t.

  Because of their proximity in age, Marta had entertained fantasies that Lily and Luz would be like sisters, since neither of them had one. She wanted them to relive what her own sister and she had growing up in Cuba. Until she married Humberto, Marta and her sister Yolanda had done everything together, shared everything. Even after Marta had fled to the mainland, the sisters wrote to each other every month. But Marta never saw two girls more opuestas than Lily and Luz, as different in their likes and dislikes as chalk and cheese. If it was the weekend and Lily wanted to go to the park, well, then, Luz wanted to go to the zoo. It had to be her way every time, and there was no compromising, otherwise there would be hell to pay. And, while this may be a good quality in a businessman, it is no asset in a woman, is what Marta thinks. Which makes Luz furious. But then, everything makes Luz furious. According to her brother Juan Pedro, Luz is just mad at the whole world and wants the world to know it.

  From the time she was five, which is when Señora Consuelo had offered Marta a job, Luz was always watching to see whether Lily got a larger piece of chocolate, more ice cream on her plate, a better birthday present. Neither of them could ever finish a whole banana when they were little, so Marta used to cut one in half. Once, Luz complained that whenever Lily was around, her mother always gave her, Luz, the culo of the banana.

  “What do you mean, the culo of the banana?” Marta asked, astonished.

  “You always give her the top part and me the bottom,” Luz accused.

  “Ay, por Dios. What are you talking about?” Marta had been so upset, so...baffled by her daughter. But La Señora had only laughed and cut up another banana. She gave Luz the top part. She handed the culo to Marta.

  “Give her time, Marta,” said Señora Consuelo, “she’ll grow out of it.”

  But, so far, thinks Marta, Luz hasn’t grown out of it. And now she fears that it is Luz herself who has cast the evil eye on Lily. Not on purpose, of course, that’s not how it works; most people aren’t even aware that they are doing it. And Luz, whatever her faults, would never deliberately wish Lily harm, but the evil eye is cast when one person covets, even unconsciously, the life, looks, possessions of another. Years ago, Luz had been envious of Irene’s hold over Lily, and look what happened to her. That Luz is envious of Lily’s pregnancy is clear to Marta, and it is impossible for her to ignore the fact that when Lily had slipped and fallen six days ago, it had been right after Luz entered the room. This is why she is relieved that Luz decided to accompany Carlos Alberto and Ismael to Sorte. But Luz’s absence is only temporary, and Marta is not sure what will happen when she returns. And so these days she prays to Maria Lionza, not only for the safe delivery of Lily’s baby, but for the delivery of Luz from the sickness that is envy. In return she offers to give up her petition of revenge against her enemy.

  Marta wonders whether there might be an advantage to having children late in life, although it is generally considered dangerous because the later you have them, the more likely they could turn out mental. She once saw an older woman—forty-five or so—in the grocery store in La Esmeralda. She had her child by the hand. Marta saw that the child had slanty eyes like a Chinese person, and her tongue was hanging out of her mouth. It scared her half to death, because she was thirty-six at the time, and pregnant with Luz. What if my baby comes out like that, she had thought.

  When she was growing up, it was considered best to get the childbearing over with when you were young. It was unthinkable for a girl to remain unmarried out of choice beyond the age of twenty-three. There was none of this modern nonsense about how women had to fulfill themselves intellectually and have careers before they settled down to have their babies. In those days, until the Revolution, the roles were clear—women stayed at home and had the babies, and the men brought home the bacon. Everyone had their work cut out for them, knew what it was, and nobody was traumatized about it. But today’s women are having their babies later and later. Marta read an article in her favorite magazine, Mujeres, that said there was a woman in the United States who had a baby at fifty-five. Her daughter couldn’t have one because there was something wrong with her insides, so this lady decided to have one for her. Fifty-five! Imagine! The woman’s daughter said she wanted a “natural child.” But it seems to Marta that there was nothing natural about any of it, because the mother had to use her twenty-eight-year-old daughter’s egg and grow the egg outside of her body in a petri dish. Then the daughter’s egg had to be planted in the mother’s womb at a later date. Even though Marta no longer attends the Church, she can see why His Holiness, the Pope, would be against such a procedure, because if people are going to grow babies in dishes and grandmothers are going to start giving birth to their own grandchildren, where is the line to be drawn?

  Consuelo says that because of her age, which w
as forty when Lily was born, the first thing everyone did was count all the baby’s fingers and toes. Then they closely examined her genitalia, because sometimes, when the mother is too old, the baby is born with both sexes. But, gracias a Maria Lionza, Lily was perfect when she was born.

  Marta sometimes used to worry that it would be a problem for Lily to have a mother old enough to be her grandmother, but Lily and La Señora, they were always like two peas in a pod. And Lily never gave her mother any trouble. At least not after she was separated from that little demon, Irene Dos Santos.

  “Don’t say that,” says a voice in her ears.

  “Ah, it’s you, isn’t it, still causing trouble in this house,” Marta says. “Why don’t you show yourself?”

  But there is no response and Marta knows the reason why: it is far easier to get rid of a ghost you can see than one who hides in your ears.

  The wild passiflora edulis found in the rain forests of South America are hardy vines that are able to endure the onslaught of pests and extreme weather.