The Affairs of the Falcóns

by Melissa Rivero

She then remembered her handbag and began to dig into it. “I’m going to pay you back.”

  He held up his hand. “I don’t want a penny from you, Ana.”

  “But I have money for you.” She pulled out a few folded bills and handed them to him. It was money that should’ve gone to Mama, but she had set it aside for him. She needed to pay off that debt too.

  “Please,” he said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. We were fine. You were fine. Our arrangement was fine. Why do you want to change things now?”

  It was fine for him. Fine for an old man with money. Ana knew men like Don Beto, men who used kindness as a disguise, friendship as a veil. She needed money to lease the car for the night shift. She needed her husband to get back to work. Talk of sending her children back, chatter about her family returning to Peru—all of it ringing perpetually in her ear. Mama would not lend her the money she needed, not all of it, and Lucho didn’t want to ask Valeria, who, as he put it, was already giving them so much, and whom, she suspected, would say no anyway.

  And then she thought of Don Beto, the man who always had a smile ready for her whenever she came to see Mama, whom she caught skimming her body with his eyes, and who only greeted her with a kiss when Mama wasn’t looking. He told her once as he walked her out, on that very block, that she could come to him for anything, anything at all; that it wasn’t just Mama who could help.

  Don Beto gave her the money she needed, but she began repaying him almost immediately.

  “I miss seeing you,” he said. “You’ve been away so long.”

  “Three weeks is not very long,” she replied.

  “For a woman like you, young and beautiful? No. But for a lonely old man like me?”

  She cleared her throat. “I appreciate your help, but I never wanted a handout. I said I’d repay you, and I have every intention of doing so.”

  “I’m sure you can pay me back eventually. Your husband’s been driving that car for what? A month? It might take you some time to pay me back, but you don’t have to. I’m glad to just have your company.”

  He was right. She couldn’t afford to pay him back. Not now, when she needed to pay back Mama, and when they needed to move out of Valeria’s. But she knew where things were headed. “One month of being your—”, she searched for the word, “companion is fair, don’t you think?”

  He reached up and stroked his finger across her lips. “No, I don’t.”

  She pulled away, tightening her mouth.

  “Come to the garage tomorrow,” he said. “After work.”

  She set her eyes on the ground, at the stubborn leaf that clung to the edge of her sneaker. She scrubbed it against the pavement, her mind searching for an excuse. “I can’t. We’re going to see an apartment tomorrow,” she lied.

  “That’s good. I hope it works out. Tuesday then.”

  She was going to have to see him. Whether it was tomorrow, or the day after, she would be forced to be alone with him again until she paid back the money he’d given her, and even then, she wasn’t sure if she could rid herself of him.

  “I won’t be able to stay long,” she said finally. “I have to get home to my children.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Half an hour, then?”

  She nodded.

  “Good.” He tipped his head toward her. “I’ll see you Tuesday then.” And without kissing her farewell, he walked off. His heels clicked along the empty street as he made his way down the block, their clack never really fading with each step.

  He was just what she expected: un sucio. A man with money who preyed on women like her, women he could take advantage of. She cursed him. She cursed Mama for not lending her the money she needed. She hated needing the money in the first place.

  When the sound of his shoes finally faded, Ana straightened her spine. The rain pelted harder on the ground, but she kept her chin up and marched on.

  3

  IT WAS A TEN-MINUTE WALK FROM THE TRAIN STATION TO LA FACTORÍA. Ana always welcomed the walk to work. She lost herself in the sound of car horns and bus growls, the soft collisions into other wrapped bodies, the blue that dripped into the winter air. She could still feel the city’s pulse with every step.

  The sounds faded as she got farther away from the main strip in that particular part of the borough. Sparrows flew overhead and their song became clearer as she got closer to the gray river that circled the island. When she had first set eyes on it, the color had surprised her. The rivers in Santa Clara were the color of the land, tan and sanguine, like the very people who depended on them for survival. Here, it was the buildings that bled into the water.

  On most mornings, she hustled through the crowds, pausing at the traffic stop signs unnecessarily longer than she needed to. The world around her grew quiet until it was just her and the flock brave enough to stay the winter.

  But not this day. She woke earlier than usual, somewhere between the moon’s retreat and the sun’s advance, with a restlessness she had not felt since before she came to New York; the same kind that wrestled her from slumber the nights before she first told Lucho about her pregnancies. Only this time, it was the weight of Don Beto’s request that sat on her chest. Her promise to return chased her, and no matter how much she walked or where she headed, she couldn’t leave it anywhere behind. His mouth, his teeth clung to her like the flock of sparrows she usually welcomed in the mornings, but whose chatter now only gnawed at her ear.

  They stayed with her as she turned a corner toward the congealing river. La factoría was the last building on the block, looming over the others, watching everyone in its shadow as though it were a church. Its windows, misted with age and frost, defiantly faced the morning sun.

  Outside its main door, women huddled in batches beneath clouds of smoke, tossing “Merry Christmases” at her as she walked by. Despite her mood, she returned the greeting, and as she repeated the words, her chest grew lighter, her steps slowed. Christmas was over; a new year was only days away. Despite the turmoil of the past few months—of the last few years—she reminded herself of her good fortune. She was blessed with healthy children, a job. Her husband was by her side. They were safe. No matter how difficult things were, they were just obstacles; nothing that couldn’t be fixed, rectified. There was no reason to believe that the year to come couldn’t be a good one. So instead of simply wishing the women a Merry Christmas, she added “y un próspero año nuevo” to her greeting, a genuine desire that they might all benefit from good fortune in the new year.

  “I see you’re in a good mood this morning, Comadrita,” said Carla Lazarte as Ana passed by her and another seamstress standing by a lamppost. Carla had been working at la factoría for years when she recommended Ana for a job there. She did the same for her sister, Betty, when she arrived in the States just a few months earlier.

  Betty Sandoval was Ana’s oldest friend, a girl who’d grown up in the house next to hers in Santa Clara. She stood now with a group several feet from la factoría’s main door. The huddle rumbled in a billow of smoke. When she saw Ana, Betty broke out of the group and walked toward her. A cigarette dangled from her mouth and coffee slipped from the lipstick-stained Styrofoam cup in her hand.

  “Don’t tell me that’s breakfast?” said Ana, pointing to the cigarette.

  Betty paused halfway toward her. “Good morning!” she said, her eyes widening though neither the caffeine nor the feigned enthusiasm could shake the look of listlessness that had settled on her gaze long ago. Betty’s eyes had once seemed as if they were on the verge of plunging into a dream, a dream so sweet she might never wake up. Now, they were only tired. “How are you?” she asked. “I’m doing great, thanks for asking.”

  Carla hollered from the lamppost. “Don’t bother, Anita. She can’t quit now that she’s selling that shit.”

  “No one’s talking to you, Sister,” Betty shouted. “Don’t tell me you’re like that one now?” she whispered to Ana. “Are you going to start lecturing me about what I can and can’t do?
I swear this country turns everyone into a fucking saint.” She looked at Carla sideways as she puffed on her cigarette. “She’s forgotten all about those nights at the club, hasn’t she? She’s a señora now. A wife and a mother. Please. This is the only respectable job she’s had since God knows when.”

  Carla had indeed taken her role as wife and mother very seriously. She was close to forty and Betty’s eldest sister by fifteen years. The two had reunited in New York in early summer, when Carla and Ernesto had enough money—and the right paperwork—to finally bring their three children to the United States. By then, Betty had spent the better part of a decade raising them in Lima. She made a case for why she should also join them in New York. She could help the children adjust to their new environment, and also help Carla with the transition from mothering by telephone to mothering live and in person, every day. At the very least, they owed her a trip.

  It took several calls before Carla agreed, and although Betty had managed to get a tourist visa, she had already overstayed it.

  “I’m just trying to quit, that’s all,” said Ana.

  “Since when?” said Betty, as the two walked to the huddle. “You’ve always smoked. You think you can give it up just like that?”

  “No, I haven’t always smoked,” she said. “Besides, it doesn’t matter if I’ve smoked a day or ten years. If I want to stop, I can stop.”

  Betty smirked. “You won’t.” There was something in the way Betty spoke to Ana, always with a degree of certainty, that unnerved her. She knew more about Ana than almost anyone else; even more than her own husband. They had spent their childhood playing on the same dirt road, in homes separated by only a few yards. While Ana grew up an only child, Betty was the youngest in a family of six children. By the time the last sister left Santa Clara, it was only Betty who remained at home with Doña Sara and two older brothers. She occasionally joined Ana and her mother on their early morning walks to the market, often shared the same bar of soap when they washed their clothes by the river, sneaking in swims as the sun baked the earth red. Betty could only tolerate so much of the sun. Unlike Carla, she was blanquiñosa, white enough that her skin hurt if she was outside for too long. Her hair was castaño, a muted copper in the right light. But she was not full-on white; the indígena was more noticeable in Carla and their other siblings, with their straight, heavy hair and aquiline noses. But Betty had the nutty half-moon eyes of the women who traveled to Santa Clara from deep in the rain forest, and that gave her away. “Even when you were pregnant, you’d sneak in a cigarette here and there,” she said.

  “Can you keep it down?” whispered Ana.

  “Guess you are like that one,” she said. “Anyway, you’re coming with me to the pharmacy later, right?” They agreed to leave as soon as the bell rang so as not to miss the bus that’d take them to La Farmacia Pérez. They needed oils and medicines, and Betty had business to discuss with the owner.

  When Ana told the women she was no longer smoking, they congratulated her, even though Betty was making it difficult for everyone else to quit. “I told you these were good,” she said as one of the seamstresses pulled another cigarette from a packet similar to the kind Betty was smoking. “Now, I don’t have that many, but I’ll have a few for sale next week.”

  “Is that what Valeria brought back for you?” asked Ana.

  Betty gestured with her eye, and although Ana took it to mean that whatever she got from Valeria was supposed to be a secret, Betty had never perfected the art of subtlety. The gesture looked more like a twitch.

  “I guess the answer is ‘yes,’” said one of the seamstresses, and the rest giggled. She then pointed her chin across the street and said, “Look who’s coming.” The women turned almost in unison. “Disimula, disimula,” someone added, but the person who had caught the group’s attention had already made eye contact and was heading toward them.

  Nilda, the Ecuadorian, was in no rush as she slinked across the street. Her cranberry leather jacket hit just above her hip, though Ana thought the color was closer to the hard skin of the aguaje fruit that grew all over Santa Clara. Her jeans choked her rear end and thighs; how she got them on was anybody’s guess. Her highlighted black curls were still wet from her morning shower. Ana swore the hint of strawberry in the air came from their bounce.

  “Chicas, buenos días,” she shouted as she approached, her glossy mouth aglow, but only Ana returned the greeting. Not that there was a reason to be rude to Nilda. She always said good morning, added a smile even when it was clear she was making an effort, and occasionally brought in leftover humitas, corn cakes she said she made whenever her spirits needed a lift.

  But she was decadent for a factory worker. She held her hair back in a sparkly red butterfly clip as she worked her machine, not a scrunchy like the others. She never let her golden highlights dull, and her acrylic nails were always dotted with studs that sparkled under her machine’s needle. At first, Ana saw all the ways Nilda glittered and was tempted to befriend her. They were alike in many ways. Both were younger than most of the other seamstresses, even though Nilda had been working there for years. They were both South American, undocumented, married with children. They sat on the same island, along with Betty and Carla. Although Ana never saw herself in the sparkly accessories and put-together attire that Nilda was able to pull off every morning, there was a boldness there that she admired.

  But then, every Friday, the murmurs swelled. It was the day when, just before clocking out, Nilda piled on more eyeshadow and liner than usual. Everyone knew she was headed to her other job, serving drinks at a nightclub on Northern Boulevard. She might as well have come clean about working in a brothel.

  “How was your Christmas?” asked Ana.

  “Oof,” said Nilda, giving her head a gentle toss. “Exhausting. I worked Christmas Eve.” She rarely mentioned her other job, and so everyone leaned in. “I’ll have to work New Year’s Eve, too, but I can’t complain. In one night I can make what I earn here in a week.” Her smile grew wider. “I almost didn’t come in today.”

  “Why did you then?” asked Betty, with such spite that Ana swatted her friend’s forearm, catching herself only after she’d done it and unaware that the other women were giving Nilda the same contemptuous look as Betty. She caught Nilda’s eyes and felt herself blushing out of shame.

  “Because this is my real job,” said Nilda, as if pointing out the obvious. “Besides, I have my eye on a ring that’d go perfectly with these.” She tucked her hair behind her ear, and the thick, studded hoop that hung there sparkled. “My husband gave them to me for Christmas. Besides, my boy needs a new pair of sneakers, so,” she shrugged, “here I am.”

  No one else asked any questions, and when Olga, the foreman’s assistant, arrived at the main door, Nilda followed her inside.

  When she was gone, one of the women stepped closer into the huddle and speculated that Nilda’s husband hadn’t given her those earrings. A neighbor, she claimed, had seen a man drive Nilda home late at night. The man never drives to the door, just parks on the side street. She was certain that he, and not her husband, had given Nilda those earrings.

  Ana laughed. “Is it so hard to believe that maybe her husband did give her those earrings?”

  The woman cocked her head. “Don’t be stupid, Ana. If he had that kind of money, she wouldn’t be working here. No, she’s got someone on the side, for sure. Or maybe she just dropped her panties enough times to buy them herself.”

  “If that’s the case, then good for her,” said Ana. “And don’t call me stupid again.”

  A church bell chimed in the distance. The women with cigarettes in hand drew a final, long drag as the others began marching inside. A man in a fawn-colored coat, with a generous midsection and a thready Mets baseball cap, pushed past them. “Chicas, ¡avancen!” shouted George Milas as he squeezed through the door. Ana hurried toward it as Betty and the others trailed behind. The lobby swelled with women waiting for the elevators. George had already made
his way to the front. Ana and Betty took to the stairs, like they always did, racing up to the fourth floor.

  They were nearly out of breath when they reached it. El piso de costura—the garment floor—was an ashen room with rows of lean lights above dozens of sewing machines manned entirely by women. The stations were arranged in groups of four, forming islands throughout the floor. There was just enough room between each island to squeeze through sideways. Fans were spread across the room, flanking its corners, filling it with a lazy hum and a dusty mist that never seemed to dissipate. Reams of fabric leaned against the walls and exits. Blinds covered the windows, trapping in the heat, keeping out the light. In the mornings, the piles of needles closest to the windows gleamed from the daylight that somehow managed to slink its way in.

  George, still catching his breath from his sprint, eyed the women as they made their way to their stations. He had a thick accent, and knew only a few words in Spanish, but nevertheless spoke those words as assuredly as any native speaker. “Vamos, muchachas, adentro.” He handed Olga his coat and cap. She was the women’s go-to if they had any questions about money, hours, materials, running out of toilet paper in the bathroom. She was one of the few Puerto Ricans on the floor and she acted as George’s translator, even though the Dominicans and Salvadorians thought Olga’s Spanish was atrocious. Ana didn’t think it was that much worse than theirs.

  By the time Ana and Betty arrived, the other seamstresses near their island were already settling in. Ana greeted them with a “Feliz Navidad” as she hung her coat and maroon sweater on her chair, and although some were disappointed to see the holidays coming to an end, others worried about how they’d pay for it all come January.

  “But not Ana,” teased Betty. “She’s got high hopes for the new year. She’s even stopped smoking.”

  Carla set down the piece of fabric in her hand. “And you’re not drinking anymore either, are you?” she said. Ana had refused a shot of tequila from a bottle she’d brought to work the week before. Carla had pulled it out from her oversized bag, shown the women the worm still swimming at its bottom. A pre-Christmas toast with the girls, she said. But Ana refused to drink. What if they got in trouble for drinking on the job? What if she got tipsy, cut her finger, messed up the fabric, or broke the machine?