The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos

by Margaret Mascarenhas

  When Ismael opens his eyes, he is on the roof with the boy in his arms. Efraín, now awake, is clinging to his neck, and those below are whooping and cheering. Except for Luz, who is laughing and crying.

  “You see that, Efraín?” he says. “That is your family.”

  It is possible to grow passiflora edulis even from cuttings, layers, and grafts.

  Irene

  In her dream, she is riding through the forest on a giant tapir, when she sees Lily standing, bewildered, in a clearing.

  “Vamos, vamos,” she says as the tapir, over which she has no navigational or speed control, rushes through the clearing. As she passes Lily, she reaches out, expecting her to grab hold and hoist herself onto the tapir. But Lily hesitates at the critical moment, and the chance is lost. Then she is blinded by a flash of light, her neck snaps back as if she has received a blow to the chin, she falls backward, her back bending at an entirely impossible angle. The dream shifts. In this dream she is swimming. Arm over arm, pummeling the water, and with each breath, just before she dips her head to exhale, she sets her sight on the shore. Then a cramp makes her jackknife. The sandwiches. Why had she eaten so many? The cramp recedes but her leg and arm muscles are spasming. Treading water she shouts to Lily, “I cannot keep this up much longer. I want to go back.”

  “I can make it,” Lily shouts back.

  “No you can’t.”

  And suddenly, for no good reason at all, midway between the shore they had left and the shore to which they were heading, hundreds of meters away from either, they get into a fight about it. Liar, liar, they are both yelling, a short burst of adrenaline rage propelling them toward each other. Then they are hitting and pulling each other’s hair, scratching and screaming out every remembered hurt, every offense—you did this, you did that. Take it back, take back what you said, she says, climbing onto the other girl’s back. And Lily, spluttering, still screaming, goes under. Moments later she receives a kick or punch to the chin, she too goes under. She is swallowing a lot of water. She can’t see Lily. The water has closed over her head. Time grinds to a standstill. She knows she is drowning but is strangely detached from it. Suddenly someone is grabbing her by the hair, an arm goes under her chin, someone is pulling her in to shore, then pounding on her chest.

  No, she wants to say. I am not dead. I am alive. The moment the water gushes from her mouth, she opens her eyes. An older man, older than her father is staring at her, relieved.

  Where is Lily? he asks.

  Lily? she says. She can feel the fear clutch at her throat. The other girl, he says, the other girl in the water.

  There is no other girl, she lies.

  She remembers Lily’s face floating above hers, eyes wide open, hair spread out like a fan of snakes. There had been something piercingly beautiful about watching Lily breathe water.

  She awakens to the morningsong of the golden-winged Maizcuba with Manuel snoring lightly next to her, his hand heavy on her hip. Gently, she removes the hand. Raising herself to a sitting position, she studies the photograph on her bedside table, which her lover has mounted expertly, presenting it to her last night, on the eve of their first anniversary together. It was taken in the magnificent Tepuys, where they had vacationed last month.

  In the photograph, she is standing on an enormous boulder that is suspended in the crevice between two mountains cut of Precambrian rock. Five hundred meters below runs a stream that flows into a lake. Her feet appear much smaller in proportion to her body, much daintier than they actually are. Her face has been darkened with a fake shadow because her frozen smile in the original photograph had reflected her unmitigated terror. Tricks of the trade, said Manuel.

  A photographer by profession, he had insisted that she stand with both feet on the boulder because that would make a more dramatic picture. It is important to him that his pictures have drama. Though she is no stranger to drama herself, these days her role of choice is that of spectator. When she had hesitated, he had been exasperated.

  “It’s been there for thousands of years, and hundreds of people have stood on it before; why would you imagine it might fall now?”

  Perhaps because deep down she still believes that everything she imagines can become a reality?

  When she reaches into herself to find that quintessential core, she pulls out a fistful of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, emotions, that shift like tiny pebbles in the palm of her hand.

  The only bedtime stories she ever heard had been those her father—her real father, not the reticent cuckold, Benigno—would tell her about a magical place near Soledad in the state of Anzoátegui, where he had grown and lived in a big extended family on a hacienda called La Mariposa that hugged the border of the River Orinoco. A place where everyone was as easy on a horse as in a bed; where work, food, and play were shared; where every evening, after dinner, his uncle Rainaldo would bring out his cuatro and all the family would gather in the courtyard to sit on the wooden stools and wicker chairs. And Rainaldo would begin to sing, and all would join, their voices carrying high into the clear llanero sky. And his grandmother’s eyes would fill with tears each time Rainaldo sang his signature ballad, “Maria Luna,” about a campesina who fell hopelessly and forever in love with a fidalgo, for it reminded her of her own story. And every summer the women and children would travel to the north of the state to the beach town of Conoma, where they would remain for three weeks, to fortify themselves with the medicinal salt of the sea. And one evening his mother lost a diamond earring in the sugary sand at Isla de Plata, and his aunt threatened San Antonio before digging her hand into the sand and pulling out the solitaire, which shone in the moonlight like a star in the palm of her hand.

  She doubts that her father had any preconceived notions about acquainting his daughters with their llanero heritage; more likely he was homesick.

  She was three when the family made their one and only trip to Soledad from Caracas. The airport was a makeshift shack, and their suitcases were unloaded onto the tarmac. It was hot and sticky, and the air smelled like slightly wilted flowers. Her father’s brother Rainaldo was there to pick them up in his faded blue truck. Just beyond the airstrip, they had stopped at a local bar. She and her sister were given a limonada, the adults drank beer. What she remembers most about the drive to the hacienda was the incredible expanse of green for as far as she could see. Even at that age, it had made her heart beat faster.

  The trip from the airport had taken over two hours. When they finally arrived, her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins had covered her in kisses and all the aunts and uncles had taken turns holding her on their laps.

  So, her best and truest memories are of La Mariposa, of the heat, the smell of beer and fresh air, the laughter and the excited chatter of her father’s enormous family, and the sense of being enveloped in a big love blanket, of the hot summer breeze, and her grandmother’s chickens, of the enormous dining room where twenty-eight people—aunts, uncles, cousins, and farmhands—congregated. And of Señor Camacho, her grandfather’s foreman in his pristine white shirts with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, who taught her how to swim in the river. And of her grandmother’s maid, Maria Pagan, who would take out the evil eye whenever she got too cranky.

  Her biological father’s name was Pedro Lorenzo, and he had been her mother’s first love. But she never mentioned this to her Jungian therapist. Even with him, whom she later trusted the most, there were still a few details she held to her chest, a few truths she wasn’t giving up, a few secrets she would keep.

  Her earliest recollection of Pedro Lorenzo is of his breath, pungent with tobacco and coffee, as he kissed her good-night, and the roughness of his unshaven cheek before he left for work at dawn.

  “Good morning, Princesa,” he would say.

  Except for the Mariposa stories, the rest of her memories are not as vivid; they are a blur of loud voices, anguish, angry silences, a rare and curious laugh like the bark of a small dog. Besides this, she remembers only one other
thing about Pedro Lorenzo: he had liked to tease. Usually, he overdid it.

  After that first and last magical trip to La Mariposa, Pedro Lorenzo gave her a glossy picture book with many animals in it. Every evening, when he came home from work, he would sit with her on the living room sofa, the book spread open on his lap and he would teach her the names of all the animals. He also taught her the sounds the animals were supposed to make, except he mixed them all up so that she thought the zebra said “meow,” the lion, “moo,” and so forth.

  Mercedes said it was cruel and told him to stop. But Pedro Lorenzo thought it was hilarious. He’d trot out his toddler animal expert whenever he had his business friends over for dinner and make her stand in the middle of the living-room floor with everybody watching. Then he’d ask her to recite the names of the animals and their corresponding noises, the way he taught them to her.

  “And what does the (rooster/dog/pig) do, mi amor?” he’d prompt.

  When she obliged, proud of herself, Pedro Lorenzo would bark-laugh and his guests would join him in hilarity, while his child stood, bewildered, a questioning half smile on her face.

  When she was five, just before he disappeared forever, he came home in the evening with his face bloodied.

  “See what Mamá did to me?” he asked, a strange, brooding humor in his eyes. “This is what happens to you when you argue with Mamá.”

  When, at the age of ten, she blamed her mother for bashing up her father and driving him away, Mercedes told her not to be ridiculous. “Your father had too much to drink and slipped on the gravel in the driveway, the pendejo. Good riddance to that asshole.”

  The night before he left forever, he said to Irene, “Try not to be your mother when you grow up, Princesa. Be my princess forever.”

  A tall order, considering she never saw him again.

  A year later, her mother met Benigno at a bar in the Hotel Macuto, who, she said assuredly, if slightly drunkenly, was a real man, with a real job, who could take care of a real family. Unlike Pedro Lorenzo, she meant. The loser, she called him. The girls were forbidden to speak of him, much less refer to him as their father. That Benigno Dos Santos was incompatible in every conceivable way with her mother, and for that matter with herself and her sister, did not seem to factor into Mercedes’s thinking. Nor the fact that at the age of forty-five he had never been married. Nor the fact that he loved his adopted daughters more than he should have.

  When Irene turned fifteen, Mercedes had thrown a party at the penthouse she shared with Benigno.

  “Fifteen is an important benchmark in the life of every young Latina girl,” she said, though she was unable to explain precisely why fifteen was the magic number. Her mother invited only adults, her own friends, to the party, including someone called Lourdes, a lesbian sporting a crop of bleached blond hair who looked much younger than her thirty-five years. Lourdes brought her own bottle of Cuban rum, which she shared clandestinely with the quinceañera, pouring it into her Coke bottle under the table while stroking the girl on the thigh. When the birthday girl threw up all over the ceremonial cake trimmed with cherry-red hearts, her mother sent her to bed and carried on partying with her friends.

  The next day Irene wrote a letter to her best friend, Lily, who was in boarding school in Valencia. Lily, who had the parents and family she coveted. She wrote the letter in such a way as to make her own life seem the better one, more fun, more chimerical, more adventurous.

  Caracas, February 1978

  Hola, Lily. Prepare yourself. I have a lot to say.

  I’m skinnier, I cut my hair chévere and I don’t like Carlos anymore. You know why? Well, I’m skinnier because I don’t have your mother to cook for me. And besides, I don’t have time to eat. I work in Zulema’s boutique after school and I get fifty bolívares every Thursday. I cut my hair because it bored me to look at the same face every day in the mirror, and also to punish my father for grounding me last Saturday. My father hates short hair on women. But I think it looks fantastic. And I don’t like Carlos anymore because he’s too clumsy and he suffers from a severe lack of coolness. See, I went to the airport with him to pick up my sister and on the way back he crashed the car. I saw this car veering ahead of us on the autopista and I said, “¡Frena, frena!” and instead of braking, he accelerates. And so we crashed. Then two hours for the police to come. Then finally the whole thing got fixed because Zulema paid the cops off. So then we were all hot and sweaty and decided to stop and have something to drink, and when he asked me what I wanted, HIS SALIVA CAME OUT. I couldn’t stand it and I started laughing and he was embarrassed. Then, on the way back from the airport, he kept grabbing my hand because he wanted to tell me something and his saliva came out again and I felt like diving out of the car. So I go, “¿Qué te pasa?” and he goes, “Nada.” And this scene was repeated about ten times until we arrived in front of my building and finally he goes, “I like you and I want to keep seeing you.” But that saliva thing was in my mind and so I smiled and said “bye” and scrammed. Then I was thinking the whole night: that Carlos, so cute and such a good body and such a pendejo. And I never went out with him again.

  Okay, now to Ricardo who is twenty-four years old. Bueno, he really is cool. We went out on a lot of double dates with Zulema and her boyfriend. And I liked him so much. But...he went to Brazil, and do you know when he’s coming back? IN TWO YEARS. I cried when we said goodbye at the airport. We got there real early and he embraced me in some corner of the airport and French-kissed me for a long time. And he got out some keys and scraped R + I = AMOR in the cement floor. He kissed me some more and I cried. And he took off his cross, put it around my neck and said, “Te quiero,” and I cried even harder. He said he would write and always remember me and love me. And that when he came back, I would be a woman, etc, etc. Just before he got on the plane, he gave me a big French kiss in front of my sister and everybody. Well, that was the end of that. Boo hoo. That’s the way life is and you have to learn how to face it. Or else you’ll be jodida.

  Now to Diego. Remember him? I was going out with him when you were with Elvis. He wrote to me from his college in the U.S. saying he loved me forever. I wrote him back some bullshit that I’m waiting for him, etc. He hasn’t replied. Better. I hope he forgets me.

  Now to Alejandro. I’m back with him. He kept bugging me so much and swearing he loved me. And because I was depressed about Ricardo, I decided to console myself with him. And that’s why my father grounded me—he says Alejandro is too old for me. Imagínate.

  Well, now to myself again. On Friday I went to El Poliedro to see Gloria Gaynor, a gringa black singer. She sang this song called “I Will Survive” that really resonar with me. Paco and I went down and danced near the stage. And I was so happy. Last week I went to the movies with Alejandro, and his sister Dolores and her boyfriend Esau. And after the movies we went to two parties. After the two parties, we went to the Reflexions discothèque. After the Reflexions, about 4:30 a.m., we went to our houses to get our bathing suits and drove to the beach!

  Now to my sister. There was a big fight in my house between my sister and my dad, because she defended me about Alejandro. And my father threw Zulema out of the house, and now she lives with her boyfriend, Max.

  Oh, and I forgot to tell you: Alejandro and I did coca and it was really fantastic. You have to try it. By the way, my mother has a new boyfriend. He’s nineteen. Ha! He’s younger than my boyfriend! He could be my boyfriend! And guess what: he’s a Guajiro !!!

  Love you always,

  Irene

  P.S. I guess there aren’t any boys where you are. You poor frustrated thing.

  P.P.S I haven’t worn my tanga bathing suit because my culo is too white.

  P.P.P.S I hope you come back soon.

  P.P.P.P.S I love you and miss you. I mean it.

  Reading the letter again so many years later makes her laugh so hard that tears stream down her face. Even though she knows it isn’t funny. Zulema is the only one who really looked
after her—or tried to, at any rate.

  Benigno had been annoyed that Zulema and Max had taken her along with them for a weekend at Colonia Tovar. Zulema was teaching her younger sister how to be a whore, he said at the top of his voice. The way it all started was this:

  Max, in one of his benevolent avatars, offered to take Zulema to Colonia Tovar, and since Irene was standing around at the boutique when he made the offer, he chivalrously invited her to come along. They drove up into the mountains on Good Friday, arriving around nine p.m., and checked into the hotel they always stayed in called El Pequeño Aleman, where they gorged on strudel and thick German sausages. The thinness of the mountain air had made them ravenous. Max and Zulema had gotten into a minor argument over dinner about the exact pronunciation of Peugeot, which Max owned and was thinking of replacing with a Saab. Max said it was pronounced “peyott” and Zulema, who had studied French in high school and spent a summer in Paris, said Max was a barbarian. The issue was settled by a Swiss-born waiter who gave the word a different intonation from that of either Zulema or Max. Both were thoughtful after that. Irene was grateful that Max had refrained from baiting Zulema further with some of his usual sexist remarks. (Zulema liked to pretend she was something of a feminist, but since her teens she had never been able to live a week outside of a relationship, and, now in her twenties, never had a relationship with a man who could not support her in style; and she never worked except for fun.) Irene had been in a hurry to get to her room before any untoward incident could ruin the evening. Pleasantly sated and somewhat stupefied by the heavy German meal, they left the restaurant and walked to their cabañas, which were side by side. Just before they separated, Zulema had kissed her sister and whispered that they would go for a walk around the shops in the morning before Max, a very late riser even on working days (he owned his own box-making company) got up. She said they could meet for coffee around eight.