The Juliet Stories

by Carrie Snyder

  “Put him down, for the love of God,” Gloria says. “Stop trying to help.” Being angry at Juliet steadies her, and she grabs Emmanuel into her own arms and squishes him to her chest. “Poor baby, poor baby, poor little dropped soul.”

  Emmanuel’s tantrum continues unabated. This soothes Juliet.

  They step over the man, around him, away, Freddy’s hand in the air near Gloria’s shoulder, but not touching her skin. Her long, dark hair hangs loose and smooth all the way to her waist, a veil behind which she hides, and Juliet thinks: She’s crying.

  “¡La casa de los gringos!” Freddy waves his arm in grand offering.

  But the gate is padlocked shut. Emmanuel is a glowing force field of rage. Gloria wrenches the metal catch and wails: “Could this possibly be right?”

  Freddy frowns politely. He has delivered them. Confusion spills all around Gloria, that is what it seems to Juliet. Only a moment has passed. The gate is locked, but there is the wicker sofa on the porch, the clump of coconut palms growing out of a raised bed in the otherwise bare front yard, the walled back garden. This is the right house.

  In confirmation, Renate staggers out, hair askew. “Good God!” Because she is a missionary, she makes it sound like a prayer, not a swear.

  “The gate was locked, Renate, it was locked!”

  “I see that.” Renate turns a key and they file past with their crumpled clothes, their dusty legs. “The maid must have locked it. I could hear you from a mile away.”

  The gate swings shut on Freddy. He is cool, sparkling water. He winks at Juliet. “Adios, chelita linda.” But he loiters, as before, watching them.

  “What’s this?” Renate snaps the padlock shut. What, not who.

  Perhaps Gloria cannot hear over the screams. Gently she lays Emmanuel on the tiled porch, strokes soaked hair off his forehead.

  “His name is Freddy,” offers Juliet. “What’s a chelita?”

  “Chel-ita.” Renate breaks down the word. “Chele is the root; ita means little; ends with an a, feminine form — so, ‘little girl.’ Little white girl. It’s not very nice, you shouldn’t say it. They use it for people who look like him: different.” She claps her hands, off you go, as if shooing away a bothersome animal, turns and says loudly, “You have to be careful. Set clear boundaries. You can’t let them take advantage.”

  Renate is not addressing Juliet, but who else is listening? Keith hangs on the fence, waving goodbye through the metal grating. Emmanuel has wrung himself out, and Gloria lifts and cradles him in her arms, carries him into the house without a backward glance.

  Juliet finds them in their bedroom. Gloria kneels beside Emmanuel, who sleeps, utterly relaxed, on Juliet’s bed. Gloria’s hands are on her knees, palms up, head erect.

  “Mom,” says Juliet from the doorway.

  “Shhh,” Gloria frowns.

  “Renate wants to know if you want a drink.”

  “In a minute.”

  Juliet waits.

  “I said, in a minute, Juliet. In a minute, for the love of God.” Gloria is not a missionary. Her prayers are swears.

  In the kitchen, Renate pours fresh lemonade squeezed by the maid. “Does your baby brother often scream like that?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Did you have fun at the park?”

  Keith is not helping out.

  Juliet darts a glance at Renate, and away; no one has warned her that this looks sneaky. “I don’t know,” she says finally, speaking the truth. But what she really doesn’t know is that there are questions grown-ups don’t want answered truthfully; grown-ups will accept a polite yes, but what they really want is confirmation of their suspicions, suspected moral failings guilelessly revealed, though this will bring the child no favour. Nothing will. In this context, the child is immaterial to the grown-up, useful only as an unwitting spy or pawn.

  Renate turns to Keith and observes, “You have spilled something on yourself. The maid will wash it for you.”

  Keith obediently removes his shirt. He hasn’t got another.

  “Oh, but you shouldn’t have, you shouldn’t have,” Gloria grieves when informed of Renate’s action. She is not upset that Keith must spend the rest of the day half-naked, Juliet knows. She is offended that the maid should have to do anything extra for them.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” says Renate. “How else would we get our work done? You’ve no idea, Gloria.”

  Renate adds in a confiding tone, “You mustn’t pay your girl too much. She will be more than pleased to work for a nice American family. It’s cruel to pay them more than they will be able to earn when you are gone.”

  There is silence.

  “Work!” says Renate, emphatically and cryptically. She is finished, and Gloria has made no reply.

  Juliet never expects to understand fully. She listens, she squints down dark-walled passages lit by cracks of flitting sunshine, following through intertwining tunnels her mother — in conversation with another grown woman. Mystery is a shroud over words, phrases, entire paragraphs, over facial expressions and gestures, over inexplicable laughter, chilly quiet. Usually, though not now, cups of coffee are involved, and a dreamy exhaustion, kitchen chairs pulled up to the table, sugar spilled and brushed onto the floor, interruption and return, laughter, a hushed “Now when did this happen?” to alert Juliet’s ear. This exchange is different, because Gloria and Renate are not friends. They are not leisurely. But it is somehow the same, because they are women. They are speaking, with words or without, of puzzles that do not yield to easy solutions.

  It is February, 1984.

  Ronald Reagan is the president of the United States of America. He is fighting the commies. Commie is short for communist, a thick plank of a word that is used often and ominously on American television; on American television communist means evil. But Juliet takes her definition from Gloria, who says that communists are people who share everything. (Imagine fighting against people who share! It is the punchline to a joke. Juliet writes a skit on the subject, and Keith plays Ronald Reagan with gusto: “I declare a war on sharing! There will be no more sharing!”)

  Juliet loves and craves definitions. What is the specific meaning of each heavy word that falls from the sky? But a definition is not an answer. It is temporary shelter, a camp that is put up and broken down. The more she knows, the frailer the originally stable definition, as its meaning comes stamping into her brain shadowed with everything it has been and will ever be, everything connected to it.

  Nicaragua is a country shaped like a triangle where it is hot and never snows; also, they are having a war. Managua is the capital city, where it is safe to live except for the volcanoes and the earthquakes. The Sandinistas are in charge and they might be commies, but that would be okay — see definition of a communist. The Cold War is America versus the USSR; somehow this matters, even though Nicaragua is neither of those places. The CIA are scary Americans who sneak around and do bad things, playing nasty tricks on people; they might be anywhere, even pretending to work for the Roots of Justice. The Roots of Justice is going to stop the fighting in Nicaragua; Juliet’s parents work for the Roots of Justice. They will bring Americans into Nicaragua to protest against the Contra war.

  Freedom fighters: what Ronald Reagan calls the Contras. The Contras: masked men who stab Nicaraguan babies with bayonets, which are knives attached to the ends of their guns. The Contra war: the Contras are fighting against the Sandinista government. Ronald Reagan is paying, but nobody knows. Everyone needs to know. A protest is a way of telling, yelling when no one is listening.

  Pay attention!

  In Indiana, Juliet marched in a protest and got on television, carrying a sign decorated with a crayoned blue and green ball beneath a rainbow: PLEASE DON’T BLOW UP MY WORLD. It was a spring day, sunshine and a chilly wind. They walked down the middle of the stre
et and stopped for speeches in a park. Juliet was excited, and then bored, and then hungry, and then she had to pee, and then she was excited again, and mildly jealous, because her best friend, Laci, had been chosen to speak at the microphone. Laci was supposed to read a poem about flowers, but her voice shook and she forgot and instead cried, “Please stop making bombs, please stop making bombs!”

  Others were crying too. But they are still making bombs, as far as Juliet knows.

  Juliet’s parents believe they can stop the Contra; at least, they believe they have to try. That is why the Friesen family have come to Nicaragua. They have come to stop Ronald Reagan. They will take ordinary Americans to the border towns where Contras ambush and murder ordinary Nicaraguans. The ordinary Americans will not let that happen. They will stand, peaceful and strong, in between. They will wear matching green T-shirts and they will hold hands and sing songs. They won’t get hurt.

  Ronald Reagan and his freedom fighters won’t want to hurt ordinary Americans.

  Juliet would like to go too, to stand in the line and hold hands and sing. Juliet’s mother says she won’t be able to. Juliet will stay with her brothers in Managua, where it is safe and no one is being killed.

  “But what about you?”

  “I will stay too.”

  “But what about Dad?”

  Tonight the Friesen family sleeps on the floor, in the room like a womb sheltered and dark, lit by the glow of mosquito coils, orange in the breeze. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, the Friesen family rises to eat dry toast and drink café con leche (even the children; Gloria says they may) and to clog Simon and Renate’s toilet because they’ve forgotten that paper is not to be flushed: more work for the maid.

  In the afternoons, no water flows from the taps. The quick-falling evenings summon enterprising swarms of mosquitoes; Renate promises it will be worse in the rainy season. For every meal of every day, even for breakfast, the maid prepares and serves gallo pinto, red beans fried with rice, yet no one grows tired of eating it.

  Finally, an evening that stands out from the blur of temporary routine and heat-stupored stasis: Renate hosts a dinner party and invites the three other Roots of Justice team members, who live in Managua too. At last they have something to celebrate, especially Renate and Simon: the Friesens have found an apartment. The maid serves buttered squash and fresh corn tortillas and a vat of gallo pinto, and for dessert, Renate surprises everyone by preparing her specialty, baked Alaska.

  When the moment arrives, Renate switches off the lights and emerges from the kitchen balancing a mounded confection lit spectacularly on fire. In the glow of blue flame, her angular face floats pale and eerie. The smell of burning rum pervades the air.

  An impromptu cheer erupts from the emaciated Roots of Justice team members: Andrew, Jason, and Charlotte.

  “I’ve never had a baked Alaska,” says Gloria. “Everyone tell Renate thank you, please.” She is speaking to the children, who understand.

  “Thank you,” Keith and Juliet echo as the flame burns into nothing.

  From Gloria’s lap, baby Emmanuel emits a dull rumble. His bedtime bile is rising.

  “What an unexpected treat! And here in Nicaragua, who would have imagined it. Tell Renate thank you,” Gloria repeats, as if deaf.

  “We did,” says Juliet, and Renate frowns as she dishes out miraculously unthawed ice cream revealed beneath meringue topping. Juliet senses displeasure, distaste, but she does not know why.

  Renate passes the first bowl to her husband.

  “When exactly are you able to move out?” Simon wonders, licking his spoon before anyone else has been served.

  “Imminently,” Bram promises. He has rented them several rooms on the second floor of a seminary located in the broken downtown core. He can’t sit still. He plucks Emmanuel from Gloria’s arms, pacing the room and hurling the fussy baby into the air until Gloria warns he’ll be sick. But the rented apartment is only the beginning, a shining omen of all that’s to come, and Bram’s list grows with each toss, grand and grander: “And we’ll find ourselves a real office, and a proper house for you volunteers. We’ll buy desks, furniture, a truck, a bus. We’ll need a bus driver. We’ll get these kids into a Nicaraguan school, learning Spanish — right, kids? And our office will have everything we need. Telephone, typewriter, computer, tape recorders, cameras, walkie-talkies . . .”

  Everyone looks at Juliet’s dad, and their faces are flushed with sweet sugar and sweeter promises. Like Juliet, they believe him. They do not doubt.

  “Bedtime,” says Gloria, ending it all. She takes Emmanuel from Bram. “You’ve gotten him all worked up.”

  Juliet and Keith sit still, hoping their mother won’t notice them too.

  “Bedtime!” She snaps her fingers. “Juliet. Keith. Say goodnight.”

  “Just a little longer, please? We’ll be quiet.”

  “Enough. Say goodnight.”

  “It’s not fair!”

  “Say goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight. Sleep tight. Don’t let the mosquitoes bite.” One of the volunteers, the one with the moustache — Andrew — smiles at them.

  It isn’t fair. Juliet and Keith know this for a fact: no one else goes to bed at seven o’clock, no one but babies. They whisper in the dark, the throaty snores of their brother sighing inside his pen of overturned chairs in the corner. Through open windows they hear other children playing in the street, the sound of firecrackers — or is it gunshots? The blare of a radio, the motor of a passing car chased by a pack of dogs.

  A warm breeze deepens the orange of the lit mosquito coils on the windowsill, the scent of citronella drifting on a line of smoke.

  From the dining room, laughter bursts in high-pitched waves — could it be real when it sounds so fake? Juliet and Keith resent its existence: fun that excludes them. They are not sleepy. They will not sleep.

  Juliet tiptoes to the door, pulls it wider, Keith on her heels.

  Shhh!

  Candlelight flickers down the hallway, tossing shadows. They crouch against the door’s frame, conspirators clad in underwear. Smoke from cigarettes floats overhead, thick and blue. They hear the clink of glass on glass. They hear the squeak of borrowed guitar strings. More laughter, as their mother searches for a song — they know the sound of her — trying out an opening, and another, chording suggestions; and then, her discovery of the song itself, lonely before it fills out with other voices that ride in, uncertain and stumbling, till the chorus gallops by and they all catch hold, and the song swells full up, and they are vanished inside it, in another room in the mind.

  Juliet inches across the tiles, naked from the waist up, her hair hanging long and unbrushed for days, a scramble at the back that will take persistence and bitter struggle to comb free. The grown-ups slump on chairs around the table, with eyes that do not care what they find — even when they alight on her. They are lost somewhere else, in song and drink, in cause and dream.

  Gloria’s back is to Juliet, her shoulders bent over Simon’s guitar. The instrument slips out of tune, and Gloria fiddles with the pegs on which the strings are wound. Beside her, Simon slowly sips a bottle of beer while Bram tips his chair back on its hind legs, his expression animated, the wild brush of pale orange hair rising off his scalp, skin peeling in flakes; yes, yes, Simon nods seriously. Around the table dances Andrew, an elfin man, nimbly topping up glasses from a bottle of white rum; as he passes, he inclines his head and winks at Juliet.

  No one else spies her.

  Jason, another volunteer, is a man of many twitches; one of his eyes wanders independent of the other. Juliet takes a shiver of pleasure in her fear of him. He only sets down his burning cigarette to take in a bite of food, or to drink.

  The last of them is Charlotte, her round face as softly appealing as the moon’s, an
gled upward, her eyes half-closed as she tracks a path through her private forests.

  Gloria has found another song.

  Charlotte’s timbre rolls low under Gloria’s, honey spilled on the floor, sticking; Juliet’s palms are caught in it. They are similar, Gloria and Charlotte: long, dark hair, and powerful voices. But Gloria has her back to Juliet, and Juliet prefers it that way. Gloria’s face is like the sun. Do not gaze upon it. If Gloria were to see Juliet, she would send her away, back to bed, impatient with being a mother; in turn, Juliet is impatient with Gloria, for being unfair and dismissive, but most of all, for being her mother.

  Juliet does not see Renate, offering black coffee, watching her.

  ———

  “You are a little rat,” Renate tells Juliet.

  Juliet, who is on her way to the backyard with good news to tell. Juliet, who has just seen by accident — by slippery, stand-in-the-doorway-and-stare accident — Renate in their hushed bedroom (her office) silently kicking and trampling the Friesens’ bedding and meagre belongings.

  The two of them stand alone in the hallway, brilliant sun flashing through the open back door, making of Renate a silhouette.

  “Rat.” Renate speaks in a whisper, menacing, in Juliet’s face. She anticipates betrayal, tattling, though Juliet has no intention of telling. What to tell? Her family is living in a state of such untidiness — Gloria incapable of picking up after them or demanding that they do so for themselves, Bram oblivious — that Renate’s tornado can neither create damage nor leave behind evidence. But Renate is right.

  Juliet is a little rat.

  Just for now, she’s a packrat, adding to her piles, her secret stash; but one day, someday, she will be that other kind of rat, she will tell, in her own way, wearing the sheerest of disguises, quite remorseless. And none of it will be true; and all of it will be. And even that is not true, because there is nothing absolute about telling: there are only fragments, shards, the rare object retained whole, ciphers removed from original context, hoarded by shifty, impecunious memory.