We were quiet for a moment and then Petrona said, “Thanks for keeping my secret, niña. I don’t know what I’d do if—”
“It’s nothing, I’m glad you’re safe.” I always cut off Petrona when she thanked me, like I was embarrassed by it, but I relished the feeling of having responsibility, of taking care of Petrona in some way, of knowing things that only I knew.
* * *
There was something about the amount of words Petrona said to me, when once she had been so quiet, that made me hate how Abuela sat in the shadows. The same sickness that had taken Petrona’s voice now took root in Abuela. I had to break the spell all over again, and I was frustrated because I was just a kid and why wasn’t an adult doing anything useful? Abuela herself could fix it, I reasoned. Instead, she allowed the silence to take her over. Maybe she was a martyr who enjoyed being a martyr, as Papá and Mamá said. Abuela was so absent the thought came to me—she might as well be a vegetable. My lip curled in anger. With no one to stop me, I walked through the tattered curtain into Abuela’s store. I looked at and hated each old thing Abuela was trying to sell: the stacked notebooks, black and red pens, soaps, marbles, erasers, sharpeners, pencils, incense, packs of sanitary napkins, cologne, shampoo, conditioner, white and black shoelaces, spools of white thread, candles wrapped in crinkly images of the Virgin, corn flour, eggs. I swiped a stained-glass bottle marked with the word LUCK and hid it in my hand. Then I stole red pens (buried by the chicken coop), bottles of cologne (flushed down the toilet), black shoelaces (thrown up a tree), corn flour (mixed in mud), and shampoo (mixed into the chickens’ feed). Abuela never said a word.
The Luck bottle I kept. I turned it in my hands, Luck sloshing against my fingertips. I told Papá I had taken the bottle at the beginning of our stay, and he said he would need to pay Abuela for it. When he didn’t yell at me, I asked him if he would tie a string around it so I could wear it around my neck. Then, I went around opening drawers everywhere, looking for more things to steal, but there was nothing but old trash—sepia-colored maps, old notes, blackened coins. The little bottle swung forward and back, tapping my chest when I moved.
Mamá explained to me that you had luck depending on the year, month, day, and time you were born—it had nothing to do with bottles. She said some were born under a lucky star. She pressed a lot of numbers on a calculator and then pressed the equal sign. Luck depended on the number that flashed on the screen. She said it was numerology, the science of numbers. Mamá couldn’t add Abuela’s numbers because Abuela didn’t know them. Abuela was born in Chocó, in a field of banana trees, to a mother who couldn’t read or write. I had memorized my numbers. They were four, three, and four. Their sum was eleven. It was a lucky number, so you didn’t break it down and add one and one, like you did with the rest. Cassandra helped me do Petrona’s numbers. They were three, three, and seven. The end number was four, but neither of us knew what that meant.
Cassandra and I climbed Abuela’s roof in the middle of the night. Cassandra dared me to count the stars. Counting the stars was forbidden, because Abuela said if you counted your birth star it would claim you and you would die. There were so many stars, there was no way to know to which one you belonged. I always skipped the constellations that felt familiar, because what if it was true? Abuela taught Mamá that some things are written in the stars, but others are up to chance. Abuela learned to read the stars from her mother, who learned from her great-grandmother, who had been a weaver in the Sikuani tribe. But Abuela’s eyes were milky now, so the stars couldn’t guide her, and anyway, she was like a vegetable.
My hand ticked off the twinkling lights in the night sky, one, two, three, four. Why did I feel so guilty? Fourteen, fifteen. Like every second I felt guilty—but why? Twenty-six, twenty-seven.
Petrona always answered the phone so quickly; what room was she sleeping in? If she had been staying in her room past the indoor patio, the phone might ring three or four times before she picked up. Instead she answered the phone with the speed Mamá answered the phone. Maybe she was sleeping on the living room couch. Fifty. I told Cassandra a good way to calculate the number of stars was to count all the stars in one cluster and then take similar clusters and approximate. Cassandra said her method was better: you just looked at the twinkling lights and came up with a number. “For example,” she said and opened her arms wide. “The total number of stars in the sky is…one billion’s billion.”
* * *
The morning after we counted the stars everything was worse. Cassandra yelled for help and when we ran outside we saw that all of Abuela’s chickens were dead and dozens of flies buzzed about. Black flies disappeared down their beaks and did not come out. White, soapy foam drooled out of the chicken’s beaks. I had to run away. I threw up on the path. Mamá came and held back my hair. She helped me clean in the kitchen and my hands trembled. When she asked if I knew what had happened to the chickens I told her yes, I told her Cassandra and I had stayed up counting stars. I told her we must have counted the chickens’ birth stars.
Mamá lifted her brows in surprise, and then lowered them, deep in thought, and that’s when I told her I felt guilt and I thought it was because Abuela had taken Tica and Memo the day of the helicopters and not me.
Mamá hugged me and said against my ear that I shouldn’t feel that way, that Abuela, Tica, and Memo being there at the exact moment of the helicopters had all been written, that she had read it in Abuela’s stars. I asked Mamá what she had read in my stars, but Mamá said never to ask. There were things better left unknown.
Papá was gone buying new chickens for Abuela and Mamá pulled up a chair wherever Abuela was: the store, the garden, the bedroom, the kitchen. Telling Mamá I felt guilt made me feel better, so I decided to tell Cassandra something else. I found her deep in thought releasing a steady stream of sand from her relaxed fist over the hole of an anthill. She was like an infant god visiting a great disaster upon the ants, her subjects. I sat before her and blurted, “While you and Mamá were away at Galán’s funeral, I met Petrona’s boyfriend.”
My words made Cassandra loosen her fist all the way, and the anthill was buried in a gulp of soil. “What?”
“That’s right. They tried to fool me, saying he was some kind of carpet inspector, but it’s not like I was born yesterday.”
“Chula, what?” She shook her head. “What do you mean? Are you saying Petrona let a stranger into our house?” I glanced down and saw the ants that had been on the outside during Cassandra’s great avalanche were now frantically swarming their hill, looking for the entrance.
“Cassandra, I’m telling you, he was no stranger. In reality, he is like Romeo and Petrona is like Juliet and they could only meet in secret, isn’t that romantic?”
“Did he pass her a note?” Cassandra was obsessed about passing notes. There was a boy at her school named Camilo I knew she secretly passed notes to. Once I looked in her school bag and found a string of them, but they didn’t say I like you or I miss you; instead they were drawings about comets and great natural disasters, always one school teacher drowning or dying in some horrifying way. I lied and told Cassandra that Petrona’s boyfriend had given her a note, and I said again that it was like Romeo and Juliet and Cassandra nodded with her eyes closed, which meant she understood.
Romeo and Juliet was our favorite play. Papá had it on videocassette at home and Cassandra and I put it on whenever we wanted a good cry. Cassandra and I loved crying—not polite-crying, but tears streaming, yelling, bowled-over kind of crying. We cuddled on the floor with blankets and popcorn and the tissue box. I felt the Friar was a complete mosquita muerta and every time he came onstage, I made a buzzing sound, which made Cassandra laugh. The Friar probably made Romeo and Juliet die on purpose—that’s the kind of person he was. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had planned the whole thing in order to teach the Capulets and the Montagues some empty-headed moral lesson about loving your ne
ighbor more than yourself.
* * *
At night, Papá and Mamá whispered in bed. They thought Cassandra and I were sleeping, but we lay awake with our heads at the foot of the bed. I could smell Papá’s spearminted feet. Mamá was shaking her foot.
I heard the guerrillas are moving on. In a few days the paramilitary will be gone too. We should leave.
We can’t leave, who will take care of Abuela?
Your mother can take care of herself. We have daughters before you have a mother, Alma.
I had a mother before I gave birth, Antonio. Why can’t we take her with us to Bogotá?
She doesn’t want to go—what can we do about it?
In the dark, I sensed Papá turning on his side and then the whispering died down. I tried to stay awake in case anything else happened, but Mamá’s rocking foot sent me to a lull. It felt like it was only a second later when I sat up, hearing Abuela scream. We ran to her and turned on the light and saw Abuela tumbled on the floor, coiled in a blanket. Mamá was hysterical. “What is it, Mamá? What’s happened? Was it a dream?” We saw Abuela’s exposed back.
Through the open back of her nightdress we saw how the skin was covered in a bladed cape of cactus thorns like she was a flesh-and-blood-porcupine. Papá yelled he would get aguardiente and Abuela moaned and crawled on the floor. The thorns were on her thighs too, and I ran out.
Everything came out of me in the toilet, fear and water and food and bile and guilt, and then I lay with my forehead on the tiled floor. For an hour we heard Abuela cry, and then a doctor came in, white coat black bag, and the door to Abuela’s room was shut. Everything was quiet and Papá said the doctor had probably injected Abuela with something to make her sleep.
When the doctor came out he told Papá that Abuela had been in shock probably since the day of the crossfire; that’s how come she didn’t feel anything until now.
“But I don’t understand,” Cassandra said.
The doctor checked his watch. “The mind can do astonishing things.”
We were all quiet and then Papá talked to the doctor privately. When the doctor left, Mamá called all of the aunts and uncles. Everyone wanted to help, except for Tía Inés, who yelled on the telephone, Good! I hope this teaches all of you to think before acting!
Tía Carmen came from a neighboring town called La Playa. Tía Carmen was a divorcée, and she managed to leave her children behind with a neighbor, but brought along her yapping dog. It was only an hour’s drive for her and before we knew it, her dog barked and jumped at our heels and Tía Carmen crooned about Cassandra and me. “Amorcitos! Cassandra, how many boyfriends? Tell me there’s many. Remember to keep many candles burning so when one goes out you still have another, eh?” Her teased hair stood three centimeters above her head. “Chula, did you hear? This is important. How is school, cielitos? I want Excellent written over and over on your report cards.” She lowered her voice. “How is Abuela?” Abuela was on painkillers and she believed herself to be on a cruise, even though she had never seen the ocean. I refused to go into Abuela’s room, but Tía Carmen made me. Tía Carmen held fast to my arm as we entered the dark room. “It’s good for Abuela to see your face,” she said, even though I could see Abuela’s eyes were swollen shut. Her whole body was bloated under the sheets. Mamá wrung a small towel over a bowl of water and placed it on Abuela’s forehead.
No one knew what to say, so Papá began to talk at random. “Anyone see the soccer match?” He wiped his hands on his pants and said he didn’t know why he was asking, the soccer match had been canceled now that he thought about it, how could he forget, Pablo Escobar had detonated a bomb in an airplane and ruins and body parts had rained down over a town called Soacha, which was where the game was going to take place. “Yes, so the match was canceled,” he repeated, and Tía Carmen wrinkled her lip and said, “Antonio, this is hardly the time or the place.”
I thought about how Soacha was also where Galán had been shot and then I felt like I would cry again, and then remembered I needed to avoid the pro bono psychologist and in order to do that, I needed to keep my emotions off my face. I untensed my brows and concentrated on counting seconds. I counted sixty, then began again. At my third cycle, Abuela sprang up in bed, reaching with one hand. The moment lasted only a second, but it lingered in my eye, the skin on Abuela’s arm hilled in abrasions, and her breasts with the air gone out of them dangling over her stomach. She fell back down against her pillow, asleep. This must have been what the doctor had meant when he said the mind could do astonishing things: Petrona eating from the fruit of the Drunken Tree and believing she had misplaced a bowl of soup in her sheets, and Abuela taking the doctor’s drugs and thinking herself on a cruise. Maybe the astonishing thing was how much nicer the things they imagined were compared to the real suffering of their bodies.
I closed my eyes and cried so quietly that nobody noticed. I felt so tired. I thought about the ocean Abuela would imagine; maybe the water still and clear all the way through like the water she knew, her boat smoothly making its way, like an ice cube on a table, sliding over the glassy surface, while below strange animals and long snakes coiled about. I poisoned the chickens. Had I said that out loud? I looked around the room. Everyone stared. Could my body speak on its own? Mamá looked down at me. “Chula, say that again.” The silence was shameful, but then I was speaking—“I didn’t know, how could I know?”—and Mamá grabbed me by the hair and dragged me out of the bedroom and threw me against a wall. “Have you lost your mind?”
I screamed to get free, and Cassandra came running to help me but Mamá dragged us both by the hair past the living room. “Mamá, let me go!” Cassandra protested. “What are you doing? I didn’t kill the chickens! Let me go!” Mamá hurled us into Abuela’s bathroom, and there, Cassandra and I clung to the walls and Mamá flung bucket after bucket of cold water at us. We cried and pressed against the shower corner and screamed from the cold. I covered my head with my hands.
Petrona
Aurora said they were doing well, and I should stay away because Mami was not done being angry. I wanted to check on my family. Gorrión said we didn’t have money for the bus fare. We cuddled on the living room couch. I know what will cheer you up, he said. What if we have some friends over? I told him I thought it would be disrespectful to the Santiagos. More and more I thought about the Santiagos. More and more I dreamed of Chula looking down at me from a great height. Sometimes I was as if glued to the grass; other times it was burning rocks. One dream, I heard la Señora’s voice ordering me to get up.
Just for an hour, Gorrión said, I want to introduce my friends to my future wife. Because he called me his future wife I allowed it.
We invited Leticia over and she brought some men that Gorrión knew but I had never seen. She helped them sneak in through the hole in the fence by the park. They wore hooded sweatshirts and clean jeans and looked like they were just some kids who belonged in the neighborhood. I parted the curtains in the Señora’s bedroom and waved them on when I heard the woman next door start the shower.
Seeing Leticia made me happy. We held hands as she introduced the men to me—men she herself had only just met. She pointed to each man, This is la Pulga, la Uña, el Alacrán. Did I get it right? The men lowered the hoods of their sweatshirts, putting their hands forward for me to shake with such dignity and cordiality, I couldn’t quite make fun of their names: Flea, Nail, Scorpion. I smiled at the clean-shaven, perfumed men. They grinned, not moving an inch, and I realized they were waiting for me to offer them a seat. Please, make yourselves at home, I blurted, and then Gorrión hugged each man, and they sat together. I was tense in front of the men and I pulled Leticia with me to the kitchen to make tea and arrange crackers on a plate like I had seen la Señora do. In the kitchen, Leticia smiled with her chin tucked into her chest. Did you guys…? I elbowed her, Leticia! Leticia wriggled her eyebrows. I giggled and admitted we had. An
d did you…? I covered my eyes, laughing. So you did! she said grinning from ear to ear. Suddenly she bit her lip: How are you guys doing with money? I hesitated. She held my cheek. If you ever need to do the thing with the envelopes again just let me know. She pressed my chin lightly between her thumb and forefinger. You’re so pretty, Petrona. I’m so happy for you and Gorrión.
We went to the living room to join the men. I carried the tray with refreshments but then I had to set it down in a hurry because they were howling and shouting over a game of dominoes, and there were opened bottles of beer everywhere, and I sprang forward on my hands and knees, urging them to lower their voices, and I pressed my dress on the foamy spot where one beer had spilled, and the one they called la Pulga widened his caramel eyes and snickered: Ay paisan, she must not know we are invincible.
14.
Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt
Even though it was Christmas Eve, Papá and Mamá packed our things and told us Tía Carmen was going to take care of Abuela and we were leaving for Bogotá. Cassandra was yelling, then Mamá broke a plate, and in the confusion I ran to the telephone to warn Petrona. The line clicked. “We’re coming home.” I hung up and ran to the garden. Tía Carmen held me in her perfumed arms and made me go into Abuela’s room again. Abuela’s consciousness went in and out, but Tía Carmen said we still had to feed her. I stood by and watched as Abuela clenched her jaw against Tía Carmen’s spoon. The soup steamed in front of Abuela’s face. Other times she allowed the spoon in her mouth.
Fruit of the Drunken Tree Page 13
