Fruit of the Drunken Tree

by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

  Mamá wasn’t ashamed to admit she knew nothing about politics. “Look at me,” she yelled, winking, “I’m learning. Have you seen the way Galán fills his red shirt? I’ll learn all the issues you want.”

  Cassandra shook her head, then Mamá said, “He is all a specimen, no?” Cassandra shushed her because she couldn’t hear Galán’s speech, but Mamá ignored Cassandra and begged the television, “Teach me to care, Galán, querido!”

  Galán shook with vigor on the screen, yelling into a mob of microphones: The only enemy I recognize is he who uses terror and violence to silence, intimidate, and assassinate the most important protagonists of our history!

  Mamá inched forward on her seat. “Isn’t he beautiful when he says ‘our history’?”

  Cassandra rolled her eyes.

  Mamá’s bedroom windows were completely covered in red half-tone posters of Galán. The very air in her room was tinged red from the light coming through the row of Galán faces—all of them turned up, frozen in mid-yell, his hair up in a tempest. I glanced at Petrona, who was now folding white napkins into triangles, and saw as her right eyebrow floated up and tensed a crease on her forehead.

  I decided that presidential debates were tiresome.

  I slipped underneath one poster and pressed my forehead against the window. I gazed down at the empty sidewalk and spied on the neighbors. To the right, la Soltera held a watering hose to her dying bed of flowers. To the left, small children flipped pails with dirt onto the ground. An old man was making his way across on the sidewalk. When he saw me, he leaned on his cane and stared. It only occurs to me now how symbolic it must have looked—a seven-year-old girl gazing out below a row of Galán faces, giant and feverish, trumpeting some kind of future.

  I told Cassandra about Petrona’s eyebrow going up during Galán’s speech later when we were alone in our bedroom. Cassandra said it was too little to go on, but probably Petrona was apolitical. That’s what people who didn’t like Galán were called—that’s what we learned from Cassandra’s homeroom teacher, Profesor Tomás, who said if you didn’t like Galán you were either apolitical or in a coma. When we told Mamá, she didn’t question Cassandra’s theory and explained that Petrona was apolitical because of her background. Mamá lowered her voice and told us that the girl who had recommended Petrona said that Petrona was the main breadwinner in her house. “Imagine, a thirteen-year-old—the breadwinner of a house.” Mamá said that when you had that kind of responsibility, it was difficult to be interested in abstract things like politics.

  Cassandra nodded. I didn’t know whether to agree or disagree. What I knew was that I felt sorry for Petrona, so I told Cassandra it was in our best interest to get on Petrona’s good side—because not only did Petrona control the candy, she also had the power to cover for us if we did something wrong, and she could spit in our drinks and food without us knowing. So when Cassandra and I went to play in the park, we brought Petrona along. We thought Petrona would join us, but instead she sat alone on the swings, saying nothing, doing nothing. When we invited her to build a sand mountain, she said she was resting her feet, and when we grew tired and went to her side to make conversation, our efforts fell flat.

  “What’s your favorite color?” Cassandra said.

  “Blue.”

  The silence after her one word was deafening. “Mine’s purple,” I said. “What’s your favorite television show?” This was the conventional, two-step procedure for making friends, but Petrona blushed, and her eyes teared up, then became frosted in what seemed like anger. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran away to climb a tree, and Cassandra followed. From far off, high in the branches we watched Petrona. Petrona rubbed the sleeve of her sweater on her nose. She sneezed. Cassandra said maybe Petrona didn’t have a television. I shrugged.

  We knew what it was like to feel different. There were kids who didn’t play with us because their parents forbade it. There were rumors that Mamá had Sold It. One parent said, “Poor women don’t rise from poverty with their wit alone,” and when we went to Mamá to tell her, Mamá had been so angry she fumed right into the park yelling at the top of her lungs that she had had no occasion to sell anything—It being made of gold, It bringing men to her feet before she could even think about lifting a finger to charge.

  Cassandra knew what It was, but she wouldn’t tell me, and the tightness of her face kept me from insisting. That was why Cassandra and I played alone. We chased each other around the swings, we played tag, we made castles in the sand pit and trampled them underfoot. We ignored the other children who skipped hand in hand and sat in tight circles, making believe Cassandra and I weren’t even there.

  Petrona

  In Boyacá, we had a plot of vegetables and some cows. My older brothers killed rabbits and I roasted them. Mami kept us all in school and out of trouble, the farmhouse tidy, and the table full of harvested vegetables.

  In the Hills, in Bogotá, we had no plot, and there were no animals to hunt. We got our food from the market. I made a small indoor fire to cook for us. I kept Mami comfortable in the only plastic chair we owned and when the cooking was done, I boiled eucalyptus leaves to help with her asthma. But I was not good at watching children. The little ones skinned their knees under my watch. They bloodied their hair from throwing rocks. They got black eyes. Mami wanted to know what was I doing, her children falling apart under my watch? I tried to keep them clean. I kept a bowl of water in the corner and a rag to pass over their cheeks, but I often forgot to look at them, the little ones.

  The day I bled and stained our mattress Mami had said, You’re a little woman now. Marry or go to work. I did not have suitors. I knew women in the Hills worked in cleaning. Mami said I had been doing housekeeping since I was five, cleaning for a rich family would be easy. I stood on the main path in the Hills and waited until the women returned from their day at work. They filed out of a city bus at the bottom of the hill. All the women looked worn and tired, except for one. Gabriela was a few years older than me, maybe eighteen. She was energetic, carrying big bags of groceries. I stood in her way. I asked if she knew of any work a girl like me could do. She studied me from head to toe. A girl like you…When her gaze came to rest at my eyes again she seemed to have made up her mind. She said she would come visit me, and asked if I did not live in the hut held up by the old electricity pole.

  When Gabriela came around, I wanted to show I was capable, so I gave her gaseosa. When my little siblings came in, I complained loudly about how unpresentable they were. I pretended it was my habit to drag them to the bowl of water when they came in. I scrubbed at their cheeks. Gabriela turned to Mami, Petrona tells me you suffer from asthma. I did not tell her, but everything was known in the Hills. All of us lived so close. I shooed my little siblings away and sat on a stone. Gabriela said she knew of a family in the neighborhood where she worked who needed some help. All Petrona would have to do is make some beds and meals. Mami gave her blessing, and in a few days I was getting ready in my best dress to meet the Señora. Gabriela rode with me on the bus. Try not to look shocked, Petrona, she said, these people live in a big city house. The last time I had been this far out into the city was when my family first arrived and we had to beg for coins at stoplights. Gabriela said, The woman’s name is Alma, but it’s Señora Alma to you. She pulled on my sleeve. Are you listening? Gabriela’s curly golden hair was tied in a knot at the top of her head. Her cheeks were round and dusted in freckles. I looked into her eyes. Gabriela continued, Don’t worry, I’ve told her all about you. You just say you’re good at taking care of a home because you do it for your family. You’ll most likely be hired right away.

  I had been so nervous then. The Santiagos’ neighborhood was clean and there was planning, even around the trees. They made them grow evenly in rows.

  * * *

  Mami said I had to train little Aurora so she could do the house chores. We were the only women in the family.
The boys were older, but Mami wanted the boys to focus on their schooling. Mami said if just one of them became a doctor or a priest, it would be our ticket out of the invasión. All the mothers in the Hills said something of the sort, but I hadn’t seen it work out for anyone.

  I taught little Aurora to watch her brothers. I taught her how to clean all her brothers’ clothes and wash them in a plastic tub. I gave her knives so she could cut the vegetables. I taught her to prepare unripe papaya for her brothers when they had worms. This is how you hold the papaya to spoon the seeds out, I told her, holding the long glove of the halved papaya in one hand, posing the spoon ready to rake against the fruit’s flesh. Aurora took the spoon from me and dug.

  Sometimes my mind went to places I wanted to forget. Like the look of our farmhouse in Boyacá after it was torched by paramilitary. All the walls of the farmhouse fell.

  Now chop, I instructed. Little Aurora pressed her knuckles down against the table like I had shown her. She seesawed the knife slowly on the slimy black seeds. They broke apart into smaller and smaller pieces. When Aurora was finished, I collected the seeds into a napkin and wiped the knife on my pants and put it back in the plastic cup where we kept our cutlery.

  The only thing left standing of the farmhouse was the staircase. Even the wood of the banister had turned black.

  4.

  The Purgatory Spot

  It was after the once-a-month big city blackout that the mystery of Petrona began to lift. In our neighborhood blackouts were like carnaval. Cassandra and I fished out our flashlights from our sock drawers, filled balloons with water, and ran howling into the streets. We pointed our lights at trees, at houses, at each other, up at the sky. We found kids without flashlights and threw balloons at them and ran away. We hid from our unsuspecting victims among the adults, who congregated on the sidewalks complaining and dancing. We ducked behind men playing checkers. There were improvised lanterns on the ground, brown lunch bags half filled with soil, a candle buried in each and burning steadily inside. Then, we strained our ears toward the unlit park, trying to locate kids with no flashlights by sound. A woman put her hand on my shoulder and informed Cassandra and me that smoking was disgusting and warned us not to become like “yonder lost youth.”

  She had one hand on a baby carriage and was pointing her flashlight at a group of older kids huddled in the park who were making the tips of their cigarettes burn bright at their mouths. They wore jean jackets and boots. I was about to tell the woman not to worry; older kids weren’t what we were after—when just behind them, sitting on the swings, past all the teenagers, I spotted Petrona. She held on to the ropes of the swing and leaned forward with a cigarette between her lips, bowing her head into a girl’s cupped hand where an orange flame flickered.

  “Is that—?”

  “Ohh,” Cassandra said. “She’s like—a teenager.”

  “Oh my God,” I gasped. “You’re right.” I nodded. “How did we miss that?”

  “Come, Chula, let’s take a closer look.” Cassandra pulled me to her, advancing on tiptoe, and the mother called behind us, “What did I tell you? Don’t go near! You’ll fall into sin!”

  We trod softly into the darkness of the park, letting the dancing red tips of cigarettes guide us. The sky was a dull, dark blue. The tips were like flying embers. Suddenly we were engulfed by a riot of children who ran in circles around us, pointing their flashlights and screaming in delight. I turned on my flashlight and then I discovered the same face twice.

  Cassandra and I were so surprised we forgot where we were going. We shone our lights from one face to the other—unbelieving of the identical noses, the identical squinting eyes. Their names were Isa and Lala and they had the power to read each other’s minds on account of having once shared a placenta. They had flashlights too, and while we spoke, we pointed all our flashlights to the ground. Our beams spotlighted one pair of black strappy shoes, one of Converse sneakers. Kids yelled in high-pitched laughter all around us, but I heard Isa clearly as she said, “It’s like I know what Lala is thinking before Lala even thinks it.”

  “But we can only do it by looking into each other’s eyes,” Lala said. There was no moon and though I could tell where each of their voices came from, I couldn’t see their silhouettes. Isa lowered her voice. She said that on the next blackout she and her sister would break into some houses to test their power. “We’re shaping our career like Houdini—the magician?” Lala said.

  “Except,” Isa remarked, “instead of breaking out of a chest, we’re going to break into a house and then we’ll get out unharmed and unseen—it’s called Escapology.”

  “And even if we are seen, it will be dark and nobody will be able to identify us,” Lala explained.

  Cassandra said breaking into a house was criminal, but I argued it was only criminal if you took something, and Isa said I was right and Lala added their intention was just to look. “Anyway,” Isa said.

  Lala continued, “Our plan in case somebody is about to discover us is just to shine our flashlights in their eyes and then they would be blinded.” Cassandra pointed out that while it would be dark enough that nobody could see them, Isa and Lala also wouldn’t be able to see each other’s eyes, so there was no way they could use their telepathic powers. I shifted my feet in the awkward silence, and then the electricity came back on.

  I had to shut my eyes it was so bright. The grass seemed blue. The sidewalks white. Teenagers reeled, one girl reached for another’s shoulder. An adult woman was wrinkling her eyes and stretching her mouth. Then I saw Petrona standing at a distance, not weak on her feet like everybody else, but staring at us. I blinked rapidly, trying to see; she was motionless in her below-the-knee woolly coat. Her legs were bare. She looked slight, but then her stillness amidst such confusion made her seem pointy like a blade. I wondered if I was just imagining her.

  Lala grasped my arm. “Does everyone see that girl standing over there?”

  Cassandra batted her lashes and rubbed at her face.

  “Blessed Souls of Purgatory, save us,” Isa said. “It’s a ghost.”

  Cassandra cackled when she saw who it was. “It’s the girl from our house! You thought it was a ghost.”

  Isa clasped arms with her sister. “We did not.”

  Cassandra pulled me by the hand. “Let’s go, Chula. She probably wants us to follow.”

  “Be careful!” Lala called. “She could still be a ghost!” and just as Cassandra and I started toward Petrona, Petrona turned around and began the walk toward our house. Cassandra and I looked at each other, then at Petrona walking ahead. “Petrona, wait up!” Cassandra called, but Petrona didn’t slow or turn around.

  “She’s so weird,” I whispered, hooking my arm through Cassandra’s. “Who do you think she was smoking with?”

  “She has a friend,” Cassandra said.

  We walked the rest of the way in silence, staring ahead at Petrona as she shuffled her feet in the alternating pools of lamppost light.

  * * *

  The next day Isa said that if we wanted to discard the possibility that Petrona was a ghost, we were going to have to ask the Blessed Souls of Purgatory. Isa reached for a salty cracker and fit all of it in her mouth and Lala nodded once but with great reverence. We were sitting in Isa and Lala’s bedroom. It was the weekend, and Cassandra and I had spent every waking second since yesterday with them, but we had not invited them to our house in case their mother realized who our mother was and forbade Isa and Lala from being our friends. I took a cracker and bit at the edges. Lala asked if we knew who the Blessed Souls of Purgatory were and then Isa explained that Purgatory Souls were people who had sinned a little but not enough to go to hell. They were stuck on earth and had to drag heavy chains, but if anybody prayed for them—especially a child—their chains got lighter. That was why the Blessed Souls of Purgatory were eager to carry out any request put to them. Is
a said we would negotiate the terms for them telling us what or who Petrona was, but it would probably cost five recitations of the Lord’s Prayer—ten at most. The only problem was we had to find them.

  Isa said she had heard that somewhere in the neighborhood there was a place where you could see the Blessed Souls of Purgatory making their way from who-knows-where to God-only-knows. Isa said Purgatory Souls had see-through skin and that you could only see them in one spot, which meant that as you stood there watching you were constantly seeing one Purgatory Soul come into being in one step and then disappearing into the next.

  We walked along each street in our neighborhood looking for the Purgatory Spot. The streets were lined with identical white houses. Some streets spidered out, connecting to each other like a maze, while others led into the park, and still others dead-ended in guard booths and gates. The guard booths were wooden. They stood at the middle of the street with gate arms coming out of their sides. The gate arms opened and closed like powerful crocodile jaws. They were steel and long, and striped like candy canes. Our neighborhood was patrolled twenty-four hours by guards who sat inside the wooden booths in their full uniform, two guns strapped to their belts. Every time we came to the small window, we heard boleros or the sound of salsa, and we saw the guards fiddling with their two-way radios. “Red alert,” we heard one guard say, and at first I was excited because maybe there was a murder under way, but then I saw the guard was staring at a woman in a red skirt coming out to water the plants in her garden.

  The guards we talked to hadn’t heard of the Purgatory Spot. I was surprised they didn’t laugh at us, and Cassandra said it was because Mamá knew all of them by name and gave them food baskets on Christmas and the New Year, and they would be fools to mock us.