Fruit of the Drunken Tree

by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

  Mamá had once said that when Abuela was young her teeth had been white and full, but when Abuelo left, Abuela ground her teeth until they became short and flat like a deer’s.

  Mamá came in and spoke in my ear, “Say goodbye. We’re leaving.”

  I approached the narrow bed, bathed in light from the window. A crucifix hung above Abuela on the wall. I wasn’t sure if Abuela was sleeping, but I could see the brightness of her eyes through the slits. At the center were the dark globes of her irises. I hugged my arms around Abuela and placed my head on her chest. She was so small. “I’m sorry, Abuela.” Then Mamá came in with Cassandra and Cassandra held Abuela’s hands and Mamá whispered in Abuela’s ear. After some time Abuela scrunched up her face.

  Outside, Tía Carmen told us not to worry, she would care for Abuela, but then she added, “Like I always do.” Her dog yapped at the door and Mamá didn’t look at her and we all got in the car. From the backseat I watched Tía Carmen, her arms crossed over her chest, become small as the forest hills rising behind her grew tall. Just like that we abandoned Abuela. Along the dirt road of El Salado, men leaned on lampposts, women threw dirty mop water out onto the dirt road, children zigzagged around colorful streamers, everyone getting ready for the holiday night. Papá didn’t seem nervous. I knew this meant we weren’t in any danger. Maybe Abuela would be okay. Then I saw we weren’t taking the dirt road back toward Bogotá, but were driving deeper into the invasión. “Where are we going?” Mamá was quiet and Papá answered, “To see your Tía Inés. We’ll only be a minute.”

  We parked our car at the bottom of a hill and hiked up. Papá carried a black trash bag. I would have never guessed Tía Inés lived on a hill. The path was steep and pieces of metal lay scattered on the ground. Women knelt scrubbing laundry in plastic tubs. Then a row of corn stood as a fence and there was a small wooden gate at the middle. The gate opened with the flick of a latch. Papá opened it and I saw Tía Inés standing at the doorway of her house. Her stomach protruded far out in front of her. It seemed she should be falling forward from the weight. She watched us go through the gate, then turned around and went inside, her hands resting on the small of her back.

  Tía Inés’s house was small, and you could see all there was to it upon entering. There were metal folding chairs in the living room, and at the middle over the cement floor there was a small straw mat. There was a kitchen with two burners and next to it two beaten-up bedroom doors: one for Tica and Memo, and the other for Tía Inés and Tío Ramiro.

  I was afraid of going in. Cassandra must have felt the same way because she looked at me and offered her hand. We walked into the house together and sat on the floor as Papá brought a rocking chair from outside for Tía Inés. Tío Ramiro was nowhere to be seen. Mamá said, “Cómo estás, Inés?” Tía Inés didn’t answer and when we looked up Tica and Memo were standing at their bedroom door.

  They leaned against the doorway together, winded, Tica’s hair knotted, and Memo’s legs covered with streaks of dirt like he had fallen and had not bothered to clean himself. They looked different, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Other than to say they were thinner, and they no longer looked like children. It reminded me of how Petrona didn’t look her age, but older.

  Like they were scratched behind their faces.

  Papá said, “Tica, Memo! Look, we have gifts.” He opened the black bag he had carried, and Memo and Tica sat on the straw mat by Cassandra and me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Memo unwrapped his gift quickly. It was a toy rocket. He stood and for a moment he seemed like the old Memo, weaving between the chairs of that living room swinging the rocket on imaginary airways. Tica turned her present around and around in her hands. She rubbed the white ribbon in her fingers before pulling it. It was a wooden elephant. She lifted the elephant to her eyes and ran her finger along the dress on its back. Tica swung the elephant legs on the hinged joints and Papá told her you could make the elephant move on its own by pulling on the strings attached to the crossbeam.

  “It’s a marionette,” he said, taking up the crossbeam and making the elephant lift its legs one by one. Tica cooed as the elephant clomped its heels and lifted its jointed trunk. Papá made trumpeting sounds with his lips. Papá showed Tica how to make the elephant move its ears forward and back, and then Tica learned on her own how to make the elephant lift one leg. The leg lifted and swung in place at the joint and after a time it landed.

  Papá said Tica was a natural. “When I was young, Tica, I used to make my own dolls. I carved them out of wood. I made marionettes and I put on shows for my family.”

  “Really, Tío?” Tica said.

  I watched the wooden elephant as Tica bounced it on the floor. Then the elephant contorted and went into a handstand. I lifted my gaze and saw the whites of Tica’s eyes. She was looking to the ceiling. An airplane was passing overhead. Tica scrambled to her feet and grabbed Memo and they ran to the corner and covered their heads.

  Tía Inés said, “They’ve been doing that for days,” and then, “I’ve told you those are just airplanes, don’t you ever listen?”

  Tica came out of her brooding as if out of a cave and loosened her grip on Memo. She focused on her mother’s face. She was embarrassed, and Memo tried to laugh. Tía Inés walked out.

  Mamá sat them down on her lap. “Your mother’s under a lot of stress, but none of it is your fault, okay?” Mamá touched Memo’s chin and he nodded. “Soon you’ll have a little brother and you’ll have to take care of him, and take care of your mom too.” Cassandra stared past me at Mamá holding Tica and Memo, and Papá sank into his chair next to Mamá, his mouth covered by his hand.

  Mamá caressed Tica’s cheek. “Let me see your hand.” Mamá pressed Tica’s hand open, pushing her thumb against Tica’s fingers to make the wrinkles clear. “Here it says you will be beautiful.”

  Memo leaned over Mamá to see where she was looking. “Where does it say?”

  “Right here. This little wrinkle under this finger.”

  Tica took her hand back and held the finger Mamá pointed at and rubbed it, pressing against the wrinkle Mamá had pointed out.

  “It says you will be beautiful like Cleopatra.”

  Tica pulled at her Lycra shorts on Mamá’s lap and said, “I don’t know who that is, Tía.”

  “Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, Tica. She was beautiful, and she had your same haircut.”

  Tica wondered at her hand, and held it close to her face as she looked at it. She looked up at Mamá. “What else does it say, Tía?”

  Mamá took Tica’s hand again and hooked her thumb around Tica’s long pinkie and ring fingers and pressed them back. Mamá laughed. “It says here you will marry three times. And you’ll have one baby during the last marriage.”

  I didn’t know if Mamá really saw those things in Tica’s hand, but I thought it was kind of her to give Tica those words, because I saw the effect it had on Tica. Her spirits lifted.

  Mamá and Tía Inés had a long conversation before we left. When they returned to our side, Tía Inés offered to walk us down to the car, so maybe they had made up.

  I could tell that everything would settle. I knew because until we left Tica grinned secretly and walked with her head up. She grinned without showing her teeth or wrinkling her eyes. It was a magnificent grin. Walking us downhill, it seemed like Tica floated on air. As Papá, Mamá, Cassandra, and I got in the car and rolled down the windows to let out the heat, Tica pulled on her mother’s dress, and all at once it came out of her mouth; how she had the same haircut as Cleopatra, Cleopatra who was beautiful, Cleopatra who was the queen of Egypt, and how she, Tica, was going to be just as beautiful, and was going to marry three times, but she was going to have only one baby, and then Tica closed her eyes and sighed, and her lids lengthened in the sight of her dreams.

  15.

  God’s Thumb

&nbs
p; On the way back to Bogotá, Cassandra and I lay on the folded-down seats in the back of the car with our feet tucked in between the luggage in the trunk, not talking. Cassandra played with a string, twisting it in different ways to make figures—a teacup, a chicken’s foot, a noose. The figures Cassandra made over and over again told a story—Abuela’s tub, the chickens, Tica and Memo—but I don’t think she realized. I lowered my lids to rest my eyes and as our car slid us forward, I wondered whether Petrona had been able to clean up after herself. I hoped she wouldn’t be found out. I thought to myself, Good thing she’s a maid, then frowned at how unkind this was. I tried to make up for it by hoping as sincerely as I could for the danger she was in to pass. Then I thought about Tica and Cleopatra and watched as the sky dimmed and the crescent moon came out.

  Abuela said the crescent moon was God’s Nail. If you looked at it you couldn’t be sure what finger it was, or whether it was the white-tipped crescent of a hand or a foot.

  I was confident it was the thumb of the right hand.

  Time passed with the crescent of God’s nail looming over our car—magical, luminescent, suspended in a vacuum of night.

  Little by little, as the car rode on, God’s nail slipped back and back. It slid down across the black horizontal lines of the back windshield, and disappeared behind a group of gray clouds.

  The next night, the gray clouds swelled and it rained and there was no moon at all and I couldn’t help but think—

  Petrona

  Gorrión got off the bus five blocks before the stop at the Hills so that nobody would see us together. In the hut, little Aurora was starting the fire. I stood at the curtain that was our front door and watched her twist newspapers. She lit them and blew on them like that was all it took for the wood to catch flame. Sometimes we could afford coal and then Aurora had no trouble starting the fire. I felt Mami’s eyes on me, but I did not look in her direction. The little ones came in. Petrona! We missed you! I crouched by little Aurora and showed her how to stack the wood. We kept the fire late into the night, Mami asleep or pretending to sleep. I had brought us a bag of corn and a block of butter and I speared knifes into the corn so my little ones could hold them to the flame. A Christmas Eve treat. Petrona is tall like a bear! Petrona is thin like a street post! Stupid things the little ones said as they turned the golden cobs, and in the flames I imagined Gorrión’s heavy-lidded eyes.

  I gave Mami a cob of corn and she took it and thanked me and I guess she had in some small way forgiven me.

  Her eyes bore into me asking me what I had done. Eyes lunged at me, too, in the outdoor shower at the back of our hut. The light through the thin spaces of the wood like lightning from someone passing by quick, the glimmer of dark eyes, and I pulled on the string that released the bucket so I could wash the suds off my face and I put on my clothes and stepped outside, but there was no one. Chicharras sang in the grass and birds in the trees.

  Eyes like quick darts in the small church two blocks east from the Hills. I lit a candle to make up for my sins: fourteen years old, I was sure they were thinking, and already with four young children. How could I explain, my Mami has asthma, she cannot come, you idiots.

  Streamers hung from the columns of the street as we followed a parade. There were trumpets and accordions and we held lit candles that had been passed around. We put extra candles in our pockets for Mami. There was a truck filled with nuns. From the truck bed, nuns passed out wrapped gifts. We each got something—little Aurora a new doll, and the boys a fire truck and a heap of small cars with little doors that opened and plastic parts that when put together formed a ramp. I got a teddy bear. I got an extra gift for Mami too, and when she opened it at home we saw it was a scarf. There were lit candles sticking out of small Coke bottles in our hut and we were soft-spoken, asking for permission before we did anything, and Mami smiled over us and said, This feels just like when we were in Boyacá.

  And it was true, in Boyacá we had this kind of peace, there were chicharras there too. We glowed with our health, we grew strong by our candles, but in Boyacá we did not notice the beginning of the air souring like turning milk, and what if that was the case now. I whipped my fingers in the air. Don’t say that, Mami. I was afraid, and my siblings said, What, Petrona, what? But I could not explain.

  * * *

  You won’t tell I stayed with you in that house? Gorrión had asked me in the bus on our way back. I laughed. No, why would I do such a thing? Gorrión stroked my hand, sweet and worried. What if you’re found out, mi cielo? I shifted in my seat. I’ll explain I was kicked out, I won’t say you were with me. He kissed my hand. Good. He looked away and added, Because you know, the encapotados get nervous when people like me, who know who they are, because like I told you I go to listen, just friendly and cool go hear what they have to say—the encapotados get nervous when people like me get named.

  16.

  A Grand Shutting Down of Things

  I couldn’t find evidence of Petrona staying in our home. I wondered if I had made the whole thing up. I asked Mamá when Petrona was coming back, and Mamá said she wasn’t sure. I stared at the ground, thinking I had no way to call Petrona to find out if she was okay, and Mamá shook me and told me to not make a scene over a maid.

  Papá had been hired as a manager at an oil site in San Juan de Rioseco, a three-hour drive from Bogotá. He came back every other weekend and Mamá was once again ruler of our kingdom of women. Cassandra convinced Mamá to let her turn the attic into a bedroom, and I was alone in our old room. It was strange without Cassandra, spacious and clean like a hotel room.

  As the new school year started, I wondered at all hours about Petrona—whether she was injured, whether her boyfriend treated her right, what she was eating, what length her hair was.

  * * *

  In January, the drought we had encountered at Abuela’s arrived to Bogotá.

  The drought came with heat and dry air that sent the rain-bearing clouds away from Colombia and into Mexico and Texas. In Mexico and Texas there were floods. On the television forests burst into fires, the countryside mummified, the rivers steamed up and left behind fish bones and exoskeletons, and the water reserves in the country evaporated to shallow pools of water. In our yard, the grass cracked dryly under our feet and the Drunken Tree didn’t bloom.

  Mamá rationed our drinking water. She filled four one-liter plastic bottles and drew horizontal lines in red, writing alongside each in cursive, Morning, Noon, Night. When it was done, we drove to the grocery store where she struck deals with the workers. She gave them money when no one was looking. Then, even though there were no more water bottles on the shelf, just a paper folded in half that said OUT OF STOCK, the workers brought us a three-gallon container of water. They hid it inside a black garbage bag. Mamá took the bag in her hands and pressed the container against her chest in order to bear the weight. She gripped the sides of the container too strongly, and made the plastic crinkle. A few shoppers turned their heads, as if they recognized the sound, and they stared at the black garbage bag and then lifted their eyes to Mamá.

  We drove straight from the grocery store back to the house, Mamá speeding a little, checking her rearview mirror, glancing at the water in the backseat—like we were crooks.

  Maybe it was loneliness but probably it was the extra work involved in collecting water, but either way Mamá called Petrona and asked her to move into our house and even offered her higher pay.

  Mamá had never asked any girl to move in.

  Petrona arrived like how she did the first day—with a long dress pausing at the gate to stare up at our house. From Mamá’s window between the folds of her lace curtains I saw how Mamá held Petrona’s hand in hers as they walked together toward the house. Mamá and Petrona were directly underneath when I knocked on the window. Mamá kept walking, but Petrona looked up, caught in a half step. Petrona shielded her eyes, and her hand cast a shadow on he
r face. Then she hurried to Mamá. The back of my hand was still brushing against the folds of the curtain, waving at Petrona, when I realized she was gone.

  Nobody knew Petrona and I were friends, so I didn’t know how to act. I watched Cassandra, who didn’t even say hello to Petrona but acted like Petrona had never left.

  “Petrona, could you pass me that blanket?”

  “Petrona, could you get me some water?” I wasn’t thirsty, but I had to say something. Petrona draped a blanket on us, and then she winked at me when she handed me the glass. Her hair was still short, and she tucked it behind her ear as she straightened. We grinned at each other. Petrona didn’t look like she was in danger anymore. My grin grew into a smile as I observed her fresh, rosy skin, and her healthy weight. I’d have to find a time to talk to Petrona privately, but for now everyone was watching, so I returned my eyes to the newspaper.

  Cassandra and I were studying a colorful diagram of Bogotá, printed on the front page, where different colors had been assigned to a citywide schedule of electricity and water cuts. People in the newspaper called the cuts apagones, which meant the grand shutting down of things.

  In the diagram, the city was broken up into grids, making trapezoids, rectangles, and squares. A small key by the map said the neighborhoods in the blue areas would have apagones for six hours daily, while those in the red would have apagones for ten. Our neighborhood was in the yellow, meaning we would get apagones for eight hours daily.

  I thought the apagones would have the same carnaval feeling as the blackouts, but they were no fun and all work. Petrona went home on the weekends, and Mamá had to collect water on Saturdays and Sundays with our help. The hours of water sent everyone in our house leaping to sinks and showerheads and street pipes in order to collect as much water as we could in our tins and bottles and buckets and cups.