Fruit of the Drunken Tree

by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

  Mamá scrubbed her face with her hands. For the first time I noticed the color. Her forehead was white but her cheekbones and overlip glistened in a sickly green. I tried to imagine Papá’s car breaking down. Maybe there had been a nail in the middle of the road. I imagined Papá cranking on the cross-shaped tire iron as neon orange triangles flashed by the car, reflecting passing headlights. Then I imagined Papá bursting through the front windshield of his car in an accident. I averted my eyes, but the image was there. The tips of my ears tingled.

  “Go to sleep,” Mamá said. “I’ll wake you when your father comes.”

  “I want to wait, Mamá.”

  “I’m sure he’s fine. Go and I’ll wake you.”

  I went to the attic and crawled into bed next to Cassandra, the patter of rain over the world of our dreams. I tried to remain awake, thinking about Papá as I waited. I saw him walk by the attic door and went after him. I ran after him across halls and mirrors, and then I realized I was dreaming. I awoke from dreams of waiting into other dreams of waiting.

  When I awoke Cassandra was gone. I ran to Mamá’s bedroom but didn’t see Papá’s suitcase and the bed was still made. Downstairs, Mamá was smoking in the living room, and the television was emitting a loud continuous beep, showing a static image of color bars.

  “Mamá,” Cassandra was saying, shaking her shoulder. “Mamá, did Papá come?”

  Mamá narrowed her eyes until they closed. She sucked her cigarette, swallowing the smoke, then it came forked out of her nostrils. Cassandra shook her again.

  Her eyes broke open. “What is it?”

  “Did Papá call?”

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s seven.”

  She sat up and put out her cigarette in the ashtray. She picked up the telephone, and then held it in her hand. The telephone buttons lighted fluorescent green and the dim sound of the dial tone filled the room.

  “Mamá, why don’t you dial?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Mamá, dial! What are you waiting for?”

  But the color drained from her. She was looking into the distance as she replaced the receiver, then she was on her feet braiding her fingers at the nape of her head and then she was sitting against a wall hiding her face between her knees.

  “It will be okay. Your Papá is okay,” she called after a while. Her voice built a new anxiety in me.

  * * *

  The police in Medellín found a Pablo Escobar hideout. The reporter was standing fully dressed in the shower, showing how a young cop, who for no reason wondered whether the apartment bought with laundered money had running water, had turned the shower knob. What happened next was that the shower wall swung out like a door, and there, below a few steps, was a small apartment. The reporter motioned for the cameras to come in. He flicked on a switch. Everything was in disarray. There was a bed. “Here, you may imagine, the subject of the biggest manhunt in history peacefully slept while the police searched the apartment.” The reporter lifted a coffee cup left on the nightstand. “When police first entered, this coffee was still warm. The room was empty and the police left to search the vicinity, but little did they know,” the reporter said, walking to a wall where he pulled on a cord, “there was another hideout within the hideout.” A small door swung out from the wall and revealed a tight crawlspace. “Pablo Escobar probably sat here, literally a hairbreadth away from the authorities, biding his time to sneak away.”

  The telephone rang all day, but Mamá was holed up in her bedroom with her door shut so I stayed with the television. On other channels reporters followed the police in Medellín. They stood in front of normal-looking buildings, giving the same kind of updates, “The police in Medellín were seen earlier today taking over this building. The area is crawling with Secret Service agents, as authorities try to hone in on Pablo Escobar’s hideout.”

  At night Mamá turned into a black widow. Her bed was stripped and the pillows and blankets on the floor. I found her sitting on the mattress. The firelight of the candle clasped between her thighs threw a satin sheen on her hair and her contorted fingers radiated orange shadows. Her cheekbones and forehead glistened, but her eyes hung back. She was braiding the air with her fingers, mumbling prayers. When I touched her, her body crumbled under my fingers as if it were ash. She curved by the candle, crying.

  Bowled over, she rocked on her thighs and howled.

  It was a pained, low, guttural howl. It washed through my entire body. Everything was terrible. I howled as well. My eyes sprang with tears and my sight doubled: Mamá with four hands covering her face, saying, “What are we going to do, Chula? What in the world are we going to do?”

  I fell on my knees and cried on the lap of the scratchy mattress.

  “What is happening, Mamá?”

  She kicked her legs. “The guerrillas have him!”

  “So give them what they want, Mamá, what do they want?”

  “I don’t know!” Mamá pulled her hair. “I don’t know! They just called to say they have him.”

  Cassandra came in running. She shook Mamá until she understood what was happening. Then together Mamá and Cassandra screamed back and forth, Cassandra crying, “Mamá, do something!” and Mamá screaming, “I can’t!”

  Late at night, there was a sharp pain in my stomach, and my hands trembled as I stuffed them under the pillow. Mamá said that the oil company didn’t want to negotiate with terrorists because they were an American company, and Americans didn’t negotiate with terrorists, but said they would do everything to get Papá back. They would help us get to safety. In my bed I kicked my feet in sudden anger and my voice stuck in my throat, then tears ran down my cheeks.

  * * *

  One policeman turned on the knob of a stove in an apartment and almost fell through the floor as it slid away revealing a staircase. Secret tunnels led from each hideout into a neighboring house, which meant the people of Medellín were all conspiring to keep Pablo Escobar safe. Nobody seemed surprised though, because Pablo Escobar built and gave free homes to his community and he drove around invasiones handing out stacks of money to the poor. Meanwhile, Pablo Escobar was making car bombs explode in public places all over the country, because he wanted the government to call off the search.

  I stared at the walls and sat next to Mamá, overhearing her conversations on the telephone. Sometimes the voices on the phone, echoing dimly against Mamá’s ear, were prim and elegant. There was a policeman, someone from the American embassy, a lawyer. There was a plan to get us American tourist visas, but I did not understand how in the world that would help anything. I did not ask because at other times the voices were short and alarming: “We’ve got that hijo de puta, we’ll send you his balls in the post.” Mamá had to put it on speakerphone to record the voices on a little tape. When they hung up, she spoke the time and date. Mamá didn’t notice I was there, sitting on the floor by the bed—just as Petrona used to. The guerrillas wanted all the money we had. Mamá wired all our money to an account. Cassandra said we were destitute, but it didn’t feel like anything had changed. We still had our house and car, food in the kitchen, and a closet full of clothes.

  There were stories of how the kidnapped were never returned. You gathered the money, you paid the ransom, you gave them what they wanted; but the kidnapped never returned. There were many kids at school whose family members had been kidnapped. They didn’t come to school for days and then one day they showed up with grim faces and bags under their eyes. Once, the Principal provided buses for our class to go to the funeral of our classmate’s father. Her name was Laura. Everyone was afraid to talk to her. At the funeral, I handed Laura a single red rose and said what everyone said on those occasions. You said, “Mi más sentido pésame.” And then you bowed. Standing at the altar, Laura collected a bouquet of flowers in her hand as each classmate handed her a rose and bowed, saying, My m
ost heartfelt condolences. My most heartfelt condolences. My most heartfelt condolences.

  They aired a message on the television from Pablo Escobar’s daughter to Pablo Escobar: “I miss you, Papi, and I am sending you the biggest kiss in all of Colombia!” Her voice was so cheery. Maybe she was trying to sound upbeat for him, so that he wouldn’t worry, or maybe she was used to this now, her father perpetually running from the police.

  Mamá turned off the television and dragged Cassandra and me downstairs. “Come with me, we’re cleaning out her room.” She didn’t have to say whose. I didn’t want to go near Petrona’s things, but still I obeyed. I watched myself walking behind Mamá like it was somebody else going down the stairs, through the kitchen, the indoor patio. “I just want the room clean,” Mamá said to no one, and opened Petrona’s door.

  It was somebody else in Petrona’s room, then, as Mamá whipped large trash bags in the air, making them unfold—somebody else noticing the dust that had collected on the sill that used to be her window, staring at the bed that used to be her bed, gazing at the empty shelves where Petrona used to keep her clothes. Mamá was shoving the bedding into the black plastic bags. Mamá lifted the mattress to pull the old sheets off, but she dropped the mattress. “Jueputa!” She jumped away and clung to the wall.

  Her cursing brought me back to myself. I crowded around Mamá. “What’s wrong, Mamá, is it a mouse?”

  Her eyes fixed on the mattress, half the sheet taken off. “Help me,” she said. Under her direction, we pushed the mattress up until it was propped against the wall. Then we saw what Mamá had seen. A rifle. It sat on the box springs. A black long rifle with a wooden handle. It vibrated with power on top of the flower print of the box springs.

  Mamá dropped her hand from her mouth. “God,” she said. Then, “We can’t tell your father.”

  “We can’t trust anyone,” she added, and she put the rifle in a black trash bag. She put us in the car, drove to the police station, and dropped the rifle off. Mamá told us the policeman said the rifle was loaded. Cassandra looked worried. A nervous nausea settled in my throat.

  I wondered what Petrona had planned to do with a loaded rifle underneath her mattress in our house. Maybe she had planned to attack us at night. Maybe the guerrillas were going to storm our house and she was going to join them.

  Maybe Petrona was planning to defend us.

  Maybe she was planning on defending herself.

  27.

  The Mouth of the Wolf

  It was early morning when Mamá shook us awake; Cassandra and I still in our pajamas, Mamá urging us into the car, “Get in, get in.” She hurried down the avenues, sped through the red lights, rounded the corners with screeching tires. We asked, “Mamá, where are you going? Where are you taking us?”

  It was only when we exited on the dirt road where the boy had pressed his hand streaked with dirt on my window that I understood. We advanced now on the orange hill, which grew in size in the windshield until everything began to seem like a dream. The hill looked different: wet and rust-colored, and in the air the scent of burning. What would we find on this hill with its melted face? Maybe Petrona in pieces on the mattress in her shack. Maybe Papá tied up against a tree. Maybe no sign of either of them, just Gorrión burning the carcass of an animal.

  Mamá said, “There are guerrillas here, so we’ll leave soon.” We were driving parallel to the hill now. “Mamá, think this through,” Cassandra said. “What if Petrona’s boyfriend is here?”

  Petrona’s boyfriend, large as a boulder, roasting a pig.

  Mamá stopped where we had parked before. Uprooted trees and washed-out debris littered the hillside. There were large rocks and pebbles on the road too. “Her boyfriend, yes.” Mamá opened her car door. “That’s who I hope to meet.”

  We stared at Mamá standing outside the car, sizing up the wet incline, pulling up her sleeves. “She’s lost her mind,” Cassandra said, but it didn’t seem that crazy to me. I wanted answers too. I got out. There were broken planks of wood and pieces of plastic chairs and car tires scattered all over the road, all of it washed down from the top of the hill. Mamá found the opening between the rocks where Doña Lucía had taken us and she began to climb. I went after her. Cassandra yelled, “Mamá, don’t be stupid.” The mud slid from under my steps. Then I heard Cassandra behind me, “Ugh, all of this is mud.”

  We hadn’t gone that far but already my pajama pants and arms were covered in mud. I looked up to see Mamá kicking her shoes into the hill, then stepping up, like she was making a staircase. If I stepped into her steps I could ascend quicker. Little bits of plastic trash emerged from the mud like roots. We flung ourselves against the hill, advancing and slipping like we were climbing the slick insides of a living thing. We came upon a destroyed shack that had slid down, stopped halfway on the steep. Its posts were broken and the tarp that had once been a roof now flapped in the wind, tethered at one point to a post. This is what happened when the hill, that was the long throat of an animal, swallowed—you were washed down and stuck to it forever.

  The smell of burning was more intense now. I was sure it was burning. When we got to the terrace where the first shacks still stood, I saw that a great hill of trash with drawers and broken furniture and sheets and plastic had been set on fire. The smoke burned black.

  “Chula, cover your mouth, it’s toxic,” Cassandra said. She held the neck of her pajama top, worn and streaked with mud, over her nose. I did the same. Many shacks were still standing, but they had gathered debris around them. People bent over cleaning, picking up plastic and wood and rocks, clearing the way around their homes. For a while nobody noticed us. I saw shacks with broken roofs, half melted into the ground. An old woman sat inside the tent of her half-collapsed shack organizing plastic forks. A group of people roasted corn around a great fire. Suddenly everything was quiet. There was only the crackling sound of the fire. The people of the invasión watched us walk by. At the edges and corners of doorways, window frames, behind tatters of cloth, I saw eyes that flashed then hid as soon as they were seen. Mamá called out, “I’m looking for Petrona Sánchez, or information on her whereabouts. Anybody who comes forward I will pay.” Mamá slowed down to see if anybody would come. Ripped sheets lifted in the breeze. We were at the point where the boy with the three-legged dog had mistaken Petrona’s Communion dress for a wedding gown, but the tent that had been his was gone, nothing in its place.

  We rushed behind Mamá, digging toward Petrona’s house, balling up the orange hill in our hands and against our shoes. We arrived at the ridge and I saw Petrona’s house, too, had been destroyed. The post that held the structure still stood in place but everything else had collapsed. There was the triangle of the roof right up against the dirt, an opening like a small cave. I turned around and looked down the hill. The houses that had once stood on the steep were gone. Maybe that’s what had been burning. I could see from this height there were broken planks of wood in the fire, pieces of sheets, the legs and backs of dismembered chairs.

  Petrona’s house was so quiet we knew it was empty. Neither Mamá nor Cassandra could fit through the opening, but I crawled inside. What if Petrona was on the mattress? Maybe there was a note. Maybe something would explain where Papá was, where she was. I pulled myself forward on my stomach, sliding under the collapsed ceiling of corrugated steel.

  “Chula, what do you see?” That was Cassandra’s voice.

  Ahead, there was light. I crawled forward. Above the mattresses, the roof was halfway in place. Beams of light fell on the tossed beds, small puddles collected in different places on the mattresses. I stood. “Everything’s destroyed,” I said. The potted plants lay in pieces on the ground. One wall had slanted in and on the ground there was a broken table with a drawer half open—inside broken sunglasses, a nail, a small plastic soldier.

  “Señora Alma!” I heard outside. It was the voice of Petrona�
��s mother. I turned and hurried to crawl out. “Have you seen Petrona? She’s missing! Did you see her yesterday?” I crawled on my stomach toward the light. If Doña Lucía had not seen her, then maybe Petrona was with Gorrión. My elbows dug into mud. “Señora Alma? Did you hear me?” My head grazed the corrugated steel that had once been Petrona’s roof, my eyes stayed on the glare of light at the opening. “Señora Alma?” My knees slid on the mud, my hands nearly at the light. Mamá’s voice rang out: “Where is Petrona’s boyfriend?” It was crisp and cold like the corrugated steel I was escaping, then Doña Lucía’s voice, like the quicksand of mud on my feet: “You know, don’t you! You know where she is, but you won’t tell me, vieja despiadada, tell me where she is!”

  In the light, Mamá stood tall over Doña Lucía, who was just an old woman on her knees, mud on her shins, gray gathered hair tangled in a braid. “Have compassion for a mother who’s lost her child,” she begged. Then she spoke into the back of her hand, “You’ve always been a patilimpia,” and she jumped to her feet, tearing at Mamá’s shirt, “Tell me what you did with her!”

  Doña Lucía pulled her own hair and screamed and dry heaved, and I held on to Cassandra. Petrona was missing, and this woman was broken. If Petrona was not on the mattress, was she in pieces somewhere else? Doña Lucía straightened, and it was like somebody had yelled cut and action and next scene, because when she rose all her aggression was gone and she pushed a triangle into her wrinkled forehead with her brows, and her eyes became soft. “From one mother to another—go to the police. Tell them what happened to Petrona. They’ll listen to you, a woman from the city. They’ll have no choice but to look for Petrona. The police don’t listen to me.” Doña Lucía patted Mamá’s hand, now gazing down the hill, now pulling Mamá’s hand. “The station is a short walk away, come Señora Alma, just a few steps this way. Come.”