“This is where she used to sit,” Liliana said as Diego slid in next to her.
“Who?”
“My mother.”
Diego stared at her, and Liliana could see the uncertainty in his eyes, the confusion at how she could know such a thing. But then he blinked, seeming to abandon rationality for a moment and didn’t say a word.
“Why did they close this place down?”
“They closed a lot of clubs down, a lot of bars, movie theatres, opera houses.”
“But why?”
“They didn’t just get rid of the people who they thought were too subversive, but they also got rid of the places they liked to go. The arts were an easy target. There’s nothing more liberal.”
Liliana stared at him, brow furrowed. “But I don’t…”
“The thing you have to understand is that there were no rules. Their tactics didn’t make sense because no one was regulating them. It was just chaos. Like a storm—you can’t ever predict its trajectory because it doesn’t have one. That’s why when it’s over there are some buildings still standing and some that aren’t.” Then the dryness in his voice, the inflection he used to recall facts as though he were stripping the words from the pages of a newspaper, suddenly evaporated. “I remember when I was almost ten, my mother took me to see this new animated movie from overseas. I was so excited because it was the first weekend that it was showing and I was going to see it before all of my friends did. They hadn’t closed down any of the bars or clubs yet so my parents were still making good money. When we got there, the theatre was packed and the only seats left were down at the very front.
“I remember I was leaning into my mother’s lap and resting my head on her purse, waiting for the lights to go down. But when they did, there was yelling coming from the theatre next to us, people screaming. We could hear it through the walls. And then there were gunshots, the thin wall between the two theatres barely muffling the sound. People started running, thinking the shots were coming from someone just a few rows below them. My mother picked me up by the arm and dragged me through the exit and around the front to the parking lot. Three people were killed. The next day it wasn’t on the news, it wasn’t even in the newspaper.”
Diego rose to his feet, one hand gripping his neck.
“We never knew who was responsible. We suspected the military, since it wasn’t on the news, but really it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter whose side you were on or which side was winning. We were all afraid. Every day we were afraid of dying.”
Diego reached for Liliana’s hand, catching her thumb and gently pulling her to her feet.
“And then they took all of this away from us.”
He nodded toward the building’s empty carcass rising up around them. Then his hand slid onto Liliana’s waist, his palm resting against the arch of her hip, while the other curled into a fist, Liliana’s fingers hidden beneath his own.
“No movies, no art, no music.”
He bent his knees and Liliana leaned into his chest.
“And my mother who was made for Flamenco…she wasn’t even allowed to dance.”
Then his cheek grazed her ear and they began to sway, his fingers moving from her hand to her forearm, sliding across the invisible frets along her skin. Colors unfurled in bold leaps and splashes across the bare walls and light began to swell in the dark rafters overhead as Liliana let herself slip into the fear of that moment, wondering what it would have meant during the war for them to be standing like this, so close, swaying, dancing. What would it have felt like to not be free in your own body?
She felt Diego’s jaw resting against her ear and then he whispered, “I didn’t think I would ever be happy again.”
Chapter 24
Diego
Diego had hoisted himself up into one of the trees that shaded the vineyard and with a hand saw wedged between his thighs, he was just about to start cutting when something came flying at him from below. It missed but a second later something else came flying from the same direction and struck Diego in the chest—a large stone tumbling to the ground. Another came flying at him, and then another, until there were stones scattered everywhere.
Diego jumped down, unable to make out a figure from that high up in the branches, and the first thing he saw was a pair of black eyes scowling at him. He looked up at Liliana’s sister, her face caked in cheap makeup.
“What was that all about?” Diego grunted.
“Habla Inglés?” Nita asked.
“Yes,” Diego answered in English.
“Good. Now, what did you do to her?”
“What? To who?”
“To Liliana. What did you do to her? She won’t come out of her room. She’s pretending to be sick.”
Nita crossed her arms and started to tap her foot impatiently.
“I didn’t do anything, I swear.”
Diego thought about the night before, about the first breaths of morning chasing them from that old abandoned building, his arms twisted around her waist, finger’s trembling against the soft skin of her hip as they stood within the ruins of a war Liliana would never understand. They raced the sun home, Liliana silently scaling the trellis to her bedroom window as the ocean was just beginning to ignite with its pink infant flame. Diego hadn’t been able to go to sleep, his senses still devouring every last trace of her.
But he knew that’s probably what she was doing. He remembered the faint yawns she had tried to hide in the crook of her arm just as they were reaching the vineyard and imagined that she was probably curled up in bed, the blankets pulled tight over her head to keep the sunlight out.
“Then what’s wrong with her? You must know, you two have been going to the city every chance you get,” she said, her voice tinged with a slight bitterness.
Diego just shook his head, feigning cluelessness.
“I’m serious if you did something to her I’ll…I’ll tell my dad and you’ll be fired.”
Diego tried not to smile. “Yes ma’am,” he said in his best American accent.
Then she turned on her heel and started to stomp off.
“Hey,” Diego called, “maybe next time you could come with us.”
“What?” Nita said.
“To the city.”
A slip of a smile cut her cheeks and then she quickly regained her fuming expression before heading back to the house.
Chapter 25
Liliana
Liliana finally decided to get dressed, pulling on a pair of denim cutoffs and a white tank top covered in tiny lace eyelets. She reached for her bag and the journal fell to the floor. Liliana flipped the cover closed with her foot and slid it under the bed.
“Are you ready?” Nita yelled as she banged on Liliana’s door.
“Give me a minute,” Liliana said as she took another look in the mirror. “I’ll meet you outside.”
Nita groaned all the way down the stairs but Liliana couldn’t help but linger there, suddenly acutely aware of the dark circles under her eyes that still hadn’t dissolved from the night before, left there by a weariness she still couldn’t shake. She had been sitting in the exact same booth where her mother had once sat, Diego resting his arm where Ben may have laid his, stretched over the back of the booth, curled around her mother’s shoulders.
But the state of the building, a grotesque shell, just another causality in the war, only reignited the grief she was hoping it would quell. There was too much to see and smell and touch, too many strings pulling her into the past, so much darkness weighing her down. The University had been under construction because of the war, she had seen the physical traces of it lingering along the faces of the buildings, along the faces of the students and she had seen parts of the city as they had driven through it, from the airport and on the way to see their uncle Raul. But she hadn’t just gotten a glimpse of the club from a passenger seat window, she had stepped back in time, every part of her absorbing the death of the place.
And the more she was learning
about the war, the more she went chasing after her mother’s ghost, the more she was realizing that there was so much death. And she knew that if Diego hadn’t been there, hands fastened around her, keeping her intact, that she would probably still be there, sitting in that booth where her mother had waited for a man who she’d loved more than her father.
***
The three of them—Liliana, Nita and Diego, pulled into a residential area where the trees grew out over the street like leaf-trimmed domes. Diego parked in front of someone’s mailbox and Nita looked at him, confused.
“Are we going to someone’s house?”
“We walk from here,” Diego said.
“Walk?” Nita grumbled to herself.
Once they made their way past the houses the street began to curve following the shape of a round building that seemed to appear out of nowhere. The rich sweet smell of caramel and coffee beans filled the air and Nita pressed her face to the window, taking in the sparkling gold light fixtures and the people in their dark sunglasses.
Inside the coffee shop the smell was overwhelming and it adhered itself to their skin and clothes. Baristas with thick accents yelled out orders to each other but none of it seemed to disrupt the calm of the space. Each clutching a frothy cup of coffee Diego led them farther into the coffee shop to another door that opened into a small courtyard.
Dark green vines crawled up every inch of the brick walls and orange trees sprouted from small rock gardens. There were small iron tables and chairs and a few wooden benches scattered here and there. Diego reached up and pulled down one of the branches, letting Nita pluck an orange from the tree. The moment it snapped from the vine its tart sweetness filled the air and Nita breathed it in before folding it into her bag. Diego shoved open a tall rod-iron gate on the other side of the courtyard and the harsh notes of a trumpet bounced off of the concrete space.
Another passageway lined with vines opened to a crowded square where children ran in circles around a design of painted tiles. A three-man band played in the corner and vendors with their food carts fenced in the crowd. There were picnic tables where people were snacking on churros and empanadas and people dancing wherever there was room. Nita followed a spiraling pattern of bright blue tiles until she was standing in the center of the design. She looked down at a small hole in the ground directly between her feet, lips pursed against a word, but before she could ask what it was, a fountain of water came bubbling up from beneath her.
When she opened her eyes, she was soaking wet, and surrounded by a group of gawking children. Suddenly water began to shoot up from invisible holes all around them. The children raced around trying to outsmart the fountains while Liliana grabbed Nita by the arm and the three of them ran, taking cover under a small awning. Nita threw herself around Liliana until both of them were shivering in their wet clothes while Diego looked on, laughing and still perfectly dry.
Nita and Liliana exchanged a look and then they were both lunging for him. He lost his footing and they fell through a satin curtain, a group of people thumbing through racks of clothes glaring down at them. Nita popped back onto her feet, her eyes transfixed on a sparkling necklace on the other side of the shop.
“This place is like a maze,” Liliana said as she pulled herself onto her feet. “Do you come here a lot?”
“Not really. I’ve just played here a few times. It’s kind of a free for all for artists.”
Liliana ran her hand along a row of clothes. A sheer cream colored fabric caught her eye and she pulled it from the rack. She held it up to herself in front of a mirror and tilted her head to the side, imagining what the dress would look like on her.
“How much is this?” Liliana said to no one in particular.
A pink face appeared behind the glass checkout counter. The old woman slid down her reading glasses and looked at the dress.
“Ochenta,” she said.
“Eighty?” Diego asked again.
“Eighty,” the woman repeated in her most obnoxious English accent.
Liliana hung the dress back on the rack and went looking for Nita. She was staring at herself in the mirror, her neck draped in a pound of silver necklaces and a ring on each finger as she switched out a pair of earrings, trying to decide which to buy.
“Go with the blue ones,” Liliana said.
Nita went with the sapphire earrings, and a pair of gold studs, as well as a magenta scarf, and a giant rose cocktail ring. She stuffed the jewelry in her bag and they finally found their way to an opening on the opposite end of the shop. This time brick sidewalks lined a row of boutiques and restaurants but before Nita had a chance to wander off Diego led them down some stairs that went below street level.
More shops lined them on both sides but Diego took them straight to a store with giant black-framed windows and a heavy black door. They walked inside, a small bell announcing their arrival. Even if Liliana had been blind, she thought, she would know this place anywhere. She was surrounded by the salty leather smell of old books. She picked one up and traced her fingers around the gold embossment on the cover before picking up another and flipping through the pages—trying to imagine the thousand other oily fingertips that had lingered there before hers. She could look for hours but she knew Nita would be miserable.
“Where’s your Dunne?” she said to an elderly man in suspenders sitting behind the counter.
He took her straight to an old chest of drawers in the back. This wasn’t a normal bookstore. Some books were stacked semi-neatly on shelves but most of them were scattered along table tops and other mismatched furniture in the place. There were old dressers with books spilling from the drawers and there was even an antique refrigerator, the door ajar and filled with books. And yet the man had taken her straight to what she was looking for. Diego looked over at Nita who was scowling at the books, as if they were something to fear.
“We’ll come back,” he whispered to Liliana and she looked in Nita’s direction and laughed.
“We’ll have to,” she said sarcastically, “can’t you tell, she loves it in here?”
Outside Diego got them pork sandwiches from a street vendor and they ate under a purple jacarandas tree before venturing down a winding sidewalk embedded with stones and multi-colored glass. It led them to another courtyard filled with modern artwork and a series of metal sculptures.
They walked around them running their hands across the different textures until they came across someone sitting next to a small easel who was charging for quick portraits. Nita handed the man a ten-dollar bill and he did a quick colorless sketch of her face. Then the space suddenly opened up revealing a narrow wall that zigzagged between another block of shops. There were posters strung along every inch of it—stark red backgrounds with black silhouettes in the center. Below each silhouette it read DESAPARECIDOS.
“What are these?” Liliana asked pointing to the posters, her voice low so Nita wouldn’t hear.
“I don’t know. Someone doesn’t want people to forget, I guess. Not that anyone ever could.”
“Maybe they want the people who did this to remember.”
“Trust me they’ll never be able to escape what they did. Maybe it won’t come back for them in this life, but it will come back for them one day.”
“Do you see that?” Liliana said pointing to some small type at the very bottom of the poster. “La voz,” she read aloud.
“What’s that?” Nita said.
“That girl, Jo, she was a member of la voz, it’s a club at the University.”
Liliana stood staring at the posters, filling in the dark silhouettes with worn, grey faces. She imagined her mother, eyes dark and vacant and staring back at her from her place among the other disappeared. She pictured her not as a still photograph but as a moving image, trapped within the silhouette and trying to break free. Liliana blinked back the moist line forming along her lashes before Nita could see, who was now staring at the posters just as intently—her arms crossed, her face stoic. She squinted, as if
trying to see what Liliana was seeing.
“There’s an ice cream shop just up ahead,” Diego said, trying to change the subject.
“What about that?” Nita said as she took off ahead of them.
They came to a door less entryway—just a giant rectangle opening carved out of one of the stone buildings. There were chimes hanging inside, steel faces shuddering, and low hanging lamps that cast geometric shadows along their skin. Nita ran inside and began examining the elaborately decorated tables and the multi-colored candles flickering along the walls but Liliana strayed toward to a woven tapestry—some ancient scene threaded through its dark plum folds.
Diego stood back, lingering in the doorway as a pair of women dressed in headscarves—one young and beautiful with a nose piercing, and one older and hunched over, entered the shop from behind a dark curtain; each of them moving to sit at one of the tables. The younger of the two began shuffling a deck of cards as Nita bravely made her way over to sit in the chair across from her. The woman smiled, winking wryly at Nita as she told her to pick three cards. Nita pressed a finger to three of the filigreed borders and watched as each card was then flipped over in front of her. While Nita was distracted by the fortuneteller’s promises of love and riches, the old woman at the other table motioned to Liliana.
“Free reading,” she muttered in her best English.
Liliana hesitated at first but then she thanked the old woman in Spanish and sat down. Diego finally made his way inside and knelt down next to Liliana. The old woman held out her hands and Liliana did the same as she bent her face, eyes carefully tracing the lines and indentions on Liliana’s palms.
“Llave,” she said.
The Things They Didn't Bury Page 13
