Then we saw a glimmering of light.
It was shocking to see electricity when the whole neighborhood was pitch black. We ran toward the blue-lit place and then we stood, dumbstruck. It came from the Oligarch’s house. Electric light poured out of every one of her windows and even spilled out onto her lawn. A large machine rumbled on her grass like a truck engine idling. It shook up our feet and vibrated our bones. Cassandra said it was an electric generator. Only people like magistrates and ambassadors had them. We were afraid to approach, but Isa said that if it was really bright inside the Oligarch’s house and really dark outside, the Oligarch couldn’t see us, it was a scientific fact. Isa said the Oligarch probably couldn’t hear us either, her generator was so loud. And so we came right up to the house and Cassandra opened the little wooden doors to a window and all of us looked in. The Oligarch was kissing a man by her fireplace. They were sitting on the bear skin, wineglasses nearby, and an outlet with many electrical cords coming out—two for twin floor lamps, one for her stereo, another for a hot plate heating water for tea, another to a television turned down. The Oligarch kicked over a glass. The wine spilled on the bear fur but also splashed on her pretty pink slipper and I couldn’t help but laugh.
We turned to the Oligarch’s generator. We didn’t have to say to each other this is what we would take. We inhaled its sharp fuel smell, and pushed down on buttons and levers. We poured dirt and sticks and rocks into its crevices. We yanked flowers from the garden and shoved them in alongside more pebbles and sticks. Then, we heard the pitch of the machine change. It shrieked and shook like a boiling kettle, and we ran. We were behind a car across the street when there was a loud pop. The lights in the Oligarch’s house flickered and in the flashes we saw a great cloud of smoke rising, creamy gray, from the generator.
All was quiet again. I grinned in the dark. The air smelled like burning. We heard small thudding sounds coming from the inside of the Oligarch’s house, the Oligarch and her boyfriend probably bumping a knee, scraping an elbow, palming the drawer (perhaps in the kitchen) where she kept the candles. We ran two blocks to the park, howling and skipping, falling on our knees laughing. “That’ll teach her!” We lay back and gaped at the stars.
Mamá was still gone when Cassandra and I returned. We lit candles and had cereal and soda for dinner. High on sugar, we went to Petrona’s room to look for the small television. Cassandra was confused. “But do you know how much those things cost, Chula? I have a friend in school who got one, but she’s super-rich. Do you understand, Chula? We couldn’t even afford it—how did Petrona end up with one?”
“Maybe she stole it?” I was shining my flashlight under her bed, but there was nothing there.
Cassandra opened up the cabinet and trained her flashlight over the piles of Petrona’s clothes. “Are you sure you didn’t dream it?”
“I’m sure. I saw it.”
We looked everywhere we could think of but there was no sign of the small television. The excitement of the day hit us all at once. It was time for bed. Cassandra looked at a clock and told me it was four in the morning.
* * *
When I opened my eyes, there were clattering sounds. The room was unfamiliar: the ceiling low, the space narrow. I stood up on one elbow and shadowed my eyes with my other hand. The bathroom door stood ajar and bright skylight flooded on the floor. Light came through the semi-sheer curtains of the window too. I remembered we were in Petrona’s room. Cassandra moaned next to me and turned to the wall, clapping Petrona’s pillow on her head, and I got up and went out.
I cowered at the brightness of the kitchen. Mamá was standing at the counter with several gallons of water. “Look at all this water!” I said. “Where’d you get it?” Mamá’s hair was wet from a shower and it stained dark colors into the back of her blouse. “Is there water upstairs in the bathroom too?” I wanted to bathe.
Mamá stared at me, so I explained, “We only fell asleep in Petrona’s room because—” Then I realized I couldn’t tell her about the Oligarch, nor could I tell her about Petrona’s television. “Because we were waiting for you. It was so late and we were so tired. You know when you get so sleepy—”
Mamá turned from me and wiped her face.
“Mamá?”
When she turned, her black eyebrows pushed together. She held my shoulders. “Chula, am I a good mother?”
I stared into one of her eyes and then the other. I said yes, and she let me go. She put water on a burner. She was suddenly irate. Why was Papá leaving her with all the responsibilities? She was only human. What could anyone expect of her? She dropped a cup of rice grains into the water.
Cassandra came out yawning, and saw all the containers of water. “You got water! Good job, Mamá.” She got a bowl and served herself cereal and walked out. Cassandra didn’t notice Mamá’s clenched jaw. She didn’t notice Mamá’s sudden gestures. Her sighing. Her banging doors, her clattering dishes and utensils. Mamá glared at me and told me to get ready for school.
I didn’t argue. I ran upstairs to bathe, but there was no water in the bathrooms. I was in a daze getting into the school uniform, thinking I wouldn’t dare ask why Mamá’s hair was wet, or maybe I should ask why. Why had she come home so late, where had she taken a shower, where had the water come from? When I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth, I was startled by the mirror. It didn’t look like me, but some other girl—someone with a bulging patch of dirty gauze on her cheek, red hot scrapes on half of her face. I lifted the gauze to peek and there was the deep cut, and the skin was inflamed and purple. I taped it back. I wanted to change it for a clean one, but I didn’t know how. I winced brushing my teeth and when I spit the foam it was tinted pink with blood.
At school I was sent to the nurse during second period. My cut had bled through the bandage and needed to be changed. The nurse washed it and gave me aspirin and then she let me rest in the little office. She turned off the light and left the room. I overheard the teachers having a quick meeting with the Principal just outside, saying the school had no water again, that they would have to send everybody home. I was glad because I had not studied for finals.
On the bus on our ride home, younger kids ran in the aisle between seats howling, throwing paper, boys pulled on girls’ hair, and the older kids sang loudly in the rear seats. The driver nearly crashed from trying to keep order. I was glad to get home in one piece. I was exhausted. Cassandra and I walked together on the sidewalk. We opened the front door. We went up the stairs. We looked for Petrona but she wasn’t in, though she had told me on the phone she would be back by Wednesday. I checked with Cassandra—it was Wednesday, wasn’t it? Then we found Mamá. She was sitting in bed, saying nothing, widening her eyes at the air.
“Mamá?”
She glanced at us and didn’t ask how come we were home so early. Instead she urged us to sit, she needed to tell us something important.
It had been night in her dream, she said, and Petrona had been in a plaza, strange men surrounding her, kissing their lips to upright whiskey bottles and sucking the coppery liquid up. Like they were hummingbirds. Who are these men, Mamá asked Petrona in her dream, but Petrona avoided Mamá’s eyes. The men stretched their lips into smiles, except the lips kept stretching until they reached all the way up to their eyes.
“To their eyes, really, like monsters,” Mamá said. “I’m not exaggerating.”
“Mamá, it was just a dream,” Cassandra said.
“But why did Petrona avoid my eyes?” Mamá went on. Mamá recounted the dream two more times, landing on the same points, like Cassandra and I weren’t there. I told Mamá it was just a dream just as Cassandra had done, and finally Mamá said the dream was a warning. “That girl Petrona is running around with God knows who doing God knows what and I don’t know if Petrona thinks I’m painted on a wall, I can’t see what she’s doing, but I am going to find out.”
I tried to do my part without making things worse. “Mamá, I think Petrona is afraid of someone.” Mamá narrowed her eyes at the air. “Mamá, did you hear me?”
Mamá loaded us up in the car and drove to every guard booth in the neighborhood and leaned out of her window. “You watch that girl Petrona from my house. Tell me where she goes and whom she meets after work.” The guard booths were decorated with Christmas lights. The guards nodded. “Sí, Señora Alma.”
When we got home, la Soltera was waiting on her porch, leaning over our planters. There was a bouquet of roses on our porch, and la Soltera ashed her cigarette in the air over it. “It’s from that man you’ve been seeing.”
Mamá picked up the flowers, and dusted the ash off the plastic cone. “What do you know, you hag?”
“In front of your daughters and everything, don’t you have shame?” La Soltera said it was a disgrace Mamá kept lovers, was too busy to tend to her children, was a Bad Mother. La Soltera said it was hard not to think Mamá was a Bad Mother, Cassandra and I roaming around looking like vagrants. “Look at your little one,” la Soltera continued, pointing her cigarette at me. “Did she crawl out from under a bus?”
Mamá squared off in front of the planters and looked straight at la Soltera. “Yes, she did,” she said. “And so what?”
La Soltera blew out a cloud of smoke. The smoke fogged Mamá’s face, then faded. “And nothing,” la Soltera said. She turned and went into her house and closed her front door.
“You make sure you keep your absurd concern inside that stuffy, old house of yours. Vieja amargada!” Mamá lit a cigarette, took a few puffs, then threw her cigarette into la Soltera’s garden. I didn’t know if Mamá had intended for la Soltera’s garden to go up in flames, but it occurred to me that if it did, the fire might spread to our house. I leaned over the tall planters and looked at la Soltera’s patio. It was overtaken by dead leaves. I swallowed and slid under the skirts of the pines and pulled myself up into la Soltera’s garden. I found Mamá’s lit cigarette from its smoke and stamped it out. When I took my shoe away, the grass around the burnt cigarette tip wore a halo like a dark saint.
We waited all afternoon and night, but Petrona didn’t show up to work and that’s when I knew something was wrong.
Petrona
By candlelight I whispered to Aurora, Listen to Papi. Aurora was afraid, looking at me like I had lost my mind: Do you mean listen to Mami, Petrona? Papi is gone. I yanked on her arm, Do as I say. Her eyes glazed like she was retreating somewhere, the look of them something new, born the day when Pulga licked behind her ear. I held the pinch of tears back. I pulled her close. I rubbed my cheek on her head. Don’t pay attention to me, I’m just an old woman.
Aurora was quiet. On the mattress next to her, Mami was fast asleep. My little brothers did not come home anymore, but still the three of us shared the one mattress like always. Aurora said, matter of fact, Are you running away?
Of course not! I smiled. And you know what else, I lowered my voice, next time when I come back from work, the first thing I am doing is paying for concrete so we can have a real floor. Won’t that be nice? Aurora nodded. But how will you afford it? I smacked a kiss on her forehead. Don’t worry your little head! Now go back to sleep, before Mami wakes up. I waited until little Aurora settled by Mami on the mattress then I carried the bottle with the candle to the altar and blew it out. I made my way down the Hills. The sun would not be out for two hours.
* * *
Once I was small. Once I fit all of me folded in Papi’s lap. I could stare into the white scruff of his beard like I was staring up at the stars. Already he was an old man. Papi never tired. He bent over the earth, he whistled a tune. We were rich in eggs and meat then, the hens that clucked at our feet, the creatures that roamed in the wildness of the trees. We were rich in our stories: the time Uriel drank the milk instead of churning it, the time little Ramón, tiny as he was, climbed trees and fell asleep in the branches, the time I took rocks from the river and put them in my bed because I wanted to sleep where the fish slept. Then he was gone, mi Papi, and our home gone with him. But the day after he was taken, as we got ready to go, I saw him. My mind playing tricks, I saw Papi in a field of sunlight wearing his wide straw hat the way he did mornings, his back bent and his hands reaching to the earth; then he straightenend and his hat’s shadow flew from his face as he lifted his eyes, and he put his hand in the air and waved to me. I saw his face in the light, how bright and loving it was. I grabbed Uriel’s arm, Look. But when I returned my eyes, the field was scorched and it lay bare next to the ruins of the farmhouse and Papi was not there, had never been. The black staircase of our farmhouse climbed into the sky. We walked by the road and some trucks gave us rides. Our feet hurt and grew a thick covering of skin. I imagined because I had seen Papi reach his hand into the earth, next to that place where the staircase was black, I imagined the paras had taken his life. How are we going to eat? I used to ask him when our harvest failed, small in his lap. Don’t you worry your little head, he’d say. That’s what you got me for. You go play, Petro, go play, go find me a pretty stone.
23.
The Girl Petrona
Cassandra and I went through the motions of a normal Thursday morning—packing up our homework, brushing our teeth. We tiptoed around the house, hushing at the smallest sounds, listening intently to everything Mamá said. We put on our uniforms with inordinate care. We pulled on the long blue socks and folded them over below the knee, we laced up the shoes, tucked our white shirts inside the gray skirts, threaded and tied the thin blue ties around our necks, put on the school jackets, dusted the school seal. But we had no intention of going to school. Cassandra was sure Petrona would come to work, and then Mamá was going to interrogate her because of her dream. Cassandra wanted to hear what Petrona would say. Cassandra was going to find out once and for all what was going on with Petrona. I was sure Petrona would come to work too, but she’d be bloodied, the danger she’d been in rushing at the gate in our garden. I remembered her words, You don’t want to end up with my blood on your hands, do you, niña? I was determined to protect Petrona, either from Cassandra or Mamá or whomever.
In Mamá’s bathroom, I entertained Mamá with questions, and Cassandra went about the house stuffing our school bags with supplies. “Mamá, were you ever a beauty queen?” My voice sounded even, or at least Mamá didn’t notice I was nervous.
She was putting mascara on in front of the mirror. “Me? No. Why do you ask?”
My throat felt dry. “It’s just that you’re so pretty.”
Cassandra walked past the bathroom door, scanning Mamá’s room.
“I was the prettiest girl in my village,” Mamá said. She opened her eye wide and brushed her lashes with the painted bristles of the mascara wand.
I held in my breath. “Were you really the prettiest?”
“Yes!” She put the wand down on the bathroom counter. “All the boys would die for a date with me. They called me Bird of Paradise; I was so choosy. You have to learn to be choosy too, Chula.” Mamá picked up the wand again. “Never say yes to the first boy who asks you out.”
I stepped close to the door. At an angle, I could see Cassandra was emptying the change jar into my backpack. “Okay, Mamá, I won’t.”
Mamá was tensing her lips into an O, applying red lipstick. “Be good in school today, okay?” I gave Cassandra a thumbs-up, and she came in and we kissed Mamá goodbye.
Outside, as we walked to the gate where the bus picked us up, I thought of all the stories I had heard about how dangerous Bogotá was. Even while Pablo Escobar was in jail and we were in no danger of men on motorcycles or car bombs, people said ours was a city of crime. One of Mamá’s friends said that her aunt and cousin were riding the public bus when a man whispered to the girl to give him her ring. The ring wouldn’t come off so the man cut off the girl’s finger. Mamá’s friend said her niece didn’t s
cream and hid the hand in the pocket of her coat, because the man threatened to kill her mother if she made a sound. When her pocket filled with blood and the blood began to seep out, that’s when everybody realized what had happened. The man was long gone. That was a crazy story; I didn’t know if I believed it. I did believe one of Mamá’s friends who said she had once been walking in Bogotá when a man gripped a random woman’s earrings right as they hung on her ears and pulled. The woman’s earlobes split in two. The man ran with blood on his hands and in his fists the woman’s golden hoops. I took my earrings off and dropped them into my skirt pocket.
When we were close enough to the gate and the security guard spotted us, he folded his newspaper and lowered his feet and stared at us. Mamá had instructed the guards to watch us closely. It wasn’t going to be easy to sneak away, but maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it was better that Cassandra and I just went to school and let Mamá deal with whatever was wrong with Petrona. Then again, nobody knew the full story. My heart ticked up and up and up thinking it was up to me to help Petrona. There was nobody else. It was breaking daylight.
Cassandra spoke out of the side of her mouth, “We’re going to have to wait until the last minute.” We were just outside the neighborhood gate on the corner, where all the other kids in our block waited for their school buses.
“What does that mean?” I asked out of the side of my mouth.
Cassandra rolled her eyes, “Just do what I say. Try not to be suspicious.”
Cassandra made me do what we always did when we waited for the bus. We sauntered back and forth on the sidewalk and brought to our mouths imaginary cigarettes and exhaled white plumes of breath, our breath steaming in the cold air, but my heart was hardly in it. I was distracted, expecting Petrona to appear, crawling, I imagined, covered in blood. The boys from other private schools whistled at us, well, mostly at Cassandra. There were six kids from our school and eight others from other schools. Cassandra pretended to ignore the boys, but she was keenly aware. She adjusted the pink glasses that slipped down the bridge of her nose and swung her hips along the gate. Now that Cassandra’s attention shifted, I stood aside and leaned on the gate. I was both scared and thrilled. I suddenly wished that Isa and Lala’s bus stop was at our corner. I wanted to look into their faces. I knew Isa and Lala would convince me that there was nothing to be afraid of, that going out of the neighborhood by ourselves would be exciting.
Fruit of the Drunken Tree Page 21
