The Affairs of the Falcóns

by Melissa Rivero

  “No,” said Ana, “I said I won’t drink here. And honestly, I don’t drink much as it is. It just messes with my stomach.”

  “That’s because you don’t know how to drink,” said Carla. “And unless you practice, I swear, each time, it’ll be like you’re having your first.”

  Nilda chimed in. “It’s true,” she said, and Carla immediately tensed. “It’s like sex. You don’t do it enough, you forget it all. How to hold the thing, what to do with it. You forget what you like. You get lazy.”

  “Nilda!” exclaimed Carla.

  “But it’s true! You have to know what alcohol you like and how much, just like sex. What kind and how much. These are two very important things when it comes to sex and alcohol. Otherwise you get it in your mouth or in your culo before you even realize what’s happening.” She laughed, even as Carla looked around nervously to see if anyone else was listening. “Anyway, Anita,” Nilda continued, “I really do hope the new year’s better for you than this one. Although I didn’t hear about any planes crashing, so I guess your sister-in-law made it back.”

  Ana snorted. “She’s my husband’s cousin, not my sister-in-law. And yes, she’s back. She flew in yesterday morning.”

  “Good, then maybe she can cook for New Year’s,” said Betty. “Give you a break after taking care of her house and kid for a month.”

  “At least you didn’t have to worry about cooking lunch for today,” said Nilda, who had promised to bring humitas for the women. “I brought a few for your kids too.” Her humitas were a favorite of Victoria and Pedro’s, and as much as Ana wanted to make them herself, she couldn’t ask Nilda for the recipe. It belonged to Nilda, and like any beloved meal, no one ever asked the chef to share her magic.

  It was at lunch, as they walked down the hall toward the cafeteria, that Nilda held her back and gestured to the utility closet beside the restroom. Ana looked about, but the other seamstresses making their way to the cafeteria didn’t seem to notice them. It made her uneasy to be seen going into a room alone with Nilda, but she went inside anyway. The closet, stocked with cleaning supplies, mops, and brooms, was not unfamiliar to her. She often snuck in there before heading home, stuffing toilet paper and paper towels into her bag. The stacks seemed to soak up Nilda’s strawberry scent, drenching the room, swallowing Ana whole.

  “I have to leave work early a few days next week,” she said. “Wednesday and Thursday. Olga mentioned you were looking for extra hours.” Before Christmas, Ana had indeed asked Olga to keep her in mind in case there was an opportunity to put in more than the ten hours she was putting in now. Women who’d been at la factoría the longest, like Carla and Nilda, had first dibs on any overtime. The more pieces one made, the more one got paid. At a minimum, a seamstress had to work ten hours a day, but sometimes, there was a doctor’s appointment, a call from the school, a mother who died back in the homeland, that made it difficult to make the ten-hour-a-day mandate.

  If you couldn’t, you had to have a damn good reason. And you needed someone to pick up the slack. It was usually a veteran, a seamstress who knew how to do the work and could do it fast. Someone George couldn’t say no to.

  “I haven’t told George yet,” Nilda continued. “I want to make sure I have someone to cover for me first. I really can’t take another lecture about responsibility and how I don’t value the place. And I’d rather ask you than let it go to one of the others.”

  No doubt there were others who’d made the same request of Olga, eager to try to pay off whatever debt they had accumulated from buying Barbie dolls and Matchbox cars. But here was Nilda, with her shiny Christmas earrings and the prospect of a glorious New Year’s Eve, giving her a chance to cut the line.

  “It’s only two extra hours each day, so not much,” she said. “What do you say?”

  Just a couple of extra hours. That was four more hours. Four hours for her to work as fast as she could, prove herself as someone who deserved the extra hours when they needed the help. She was struck not just by Nilda’s gesture, but the timing.

  Dios es grande, she thought.

  Nilda took her stunned silence as a yes. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll tell George. And don’t thank me yet. He still has to say yes.” She stepped out, turning in the opposite direction of the cafeteria, toward George’s office. There was no doubt in Ana’s mind that he’d agree, not because he was generous or because Nilda was coming with a backup, but because Nilda was going to do whatever it was she needed to do.

  She had to do the same, and so, when she joined the others in the cafeteria, she said nothing about their conversation. Even as Carla leaned over and whispered, “What did that one want?” Ana only muttered, “Nothing,” between mouthfuls of mashed corn and cheese. She felt everyone’s eyes dig into her face and body, searching for signs of Nilda. She let them dig. Did they see the woman’s smirk, her hippy lean? Did Ana smell like strawberries now?

  After lunch, Olga pulled Ana aside, once again raising eyebrows. Yes, she told her, she could do the extra hours, and Ana thanked her again and again for the chance to prove herself. The money she made during those hours could go to Mama, get her payments back on schedule. It could even go to Don Beto. Maybe that was the more important debt to pay off. She’d need Valeria to watch Victoria and Pedro while she worked. She wouldn’t say no, not after leaving Michael in her care for a month, not when it meant Ana was one step closer to getting out of Lexar Tower.

  At the island, the other women shot glances at her, and she avoided Betty’s gaze altogether. Then Carla finally remarked, “You look happy.” Ana had always been wary of sharing good news. She was hesitant to stir up any feelings of envy, especially at work. If there was anything that could certainly stir it up, it was money and another woman. She decided not to give an explanation. They’d know soon enough that she’d be working a few extra hours when she remained at her machine while the rest of them packed up for the day. They’d understand then.

  Yet she couldn’t suppress the relief, the sense of hope, that she now dared to nurture. And so she kept on smiling and replied, “You know, Carla, I think it will be a good year.”

  4

  THAT AFTERNOON, ANA AND BETTY HURRIED TO CATCH THE EASTBOUND bus toward La Farmacia Pérez. They pushed toward the back of the bus, away from the teenagers bold enough to blare music from a boombox that one held across his lap. Betty asked what it was that Nilda wanted. She was surprised by Ana’s reply. “She wants you to cover for her?” she said, her eyes widening. “I didn’t realize you two were friends.”

  “We’re not,” said Ana. “But I need the money, just like you do. Isn’t that why you asked Valeria to bring you back those cigarettes?”

  She said nothing for the rest of the ride. The bus emptied as it hauled itself farther east, to a mostly Caribbean stretch two neighborhoods away from la factoría. Christmas lights were strewn above the street, from one lamppost to another, lit as the afternoon moon crawled up the darkening sky. Storefronts featuring mannequins, dressed in sequined red cut-out tops and fur-laced boots, defied the purified glares of those clad in ivory wedding and quinceañera dresses across the street. Appliance and furniture stores announced they were closing, everything must go. A nook at a corner, with a menu in its window, had the only sign on the strip with an English word: “Cup.” As they got off the bus, only half a block from La Farmacia Pérez, the wind picked up the smell of the birds caged in the slaughterhouse nearby.

  Lety Pérez was behind the pharmacy’s main register, perched on a swivel chair, pen in hand, flipping through the pages of an overstuffed notebook. Muffled voices emanated from a portable television hidden in a nook to her right. A picture of her daughter, in braces and a checkered uniform, hung on the wall behind her. Ana greeted her in a pitch she normally reserved for her elders or professionals—abuelitas, doctors, priests. The pharmacist’s wife held a similar status, even though she was only a few years older than Ana and was close to two decades younger than her husband.

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p; “He’s not too busy today,” she assured them, her eyes disappearing as she smiled. Navy blue liquid liner ran across their top edges, which made them look too small for her face. Tiny hair clips held back her spiral curls. She had a mole on her cheek, the first thing Ana noticed whenever she saw the woman, but her face was otherwise unblemished, line-less. Lety was a woman who slept, Ana realized, and who slept well. Even with the mole beneath her rice-sized eyes, she was beautiful.

  “I don’t get what’s so great about her,” Betty whispered as they walked to the back of the store. Since she’d met the successful pharmacist’s wife, she couldn’t fathom her appeal. Lety had been a single mother when she met Don Alfonso. Pretty, but enough to marry? “She’s got that cockroach crawling on her face.”

  “It’s not all about looks,” said Ana. “She’s educated. She’s got a degree hanging somewhere back there. I’ve seen it.”

  “She got lucky,” said Betty. “And it’s all about looks. She’ll get some enhancements in a few years, you’ll see.”

  At the back of the store, a handful of customers had gathered beneath the blue sign at the center, with the word farmacia written on it in slanted white bold letters. The waiting area was comprised of two chairs, lined side by side against the wall. A man sat in one, while a woman leaned on her cane over the second, where she had placed her grocery bags.

  There were smaller signs on either end of the counter. A stout woman dressed in a white robe and holding a white bag shouted, “García,” as she stood beneath the sign that read “Recoger.” The woman with the cane responded by hollering back, “¡Aquí estoy!”

  The other sign said, “Consultas.” Standing beneath it, with a medicine bottle in hand and explaining something to a woman with a frizzy gray bun, was Don Alfonso Pérez. He was a slim man with skin that shone like wet wood against his white pharmacist’s coat. He had closely cropped hair and a long, inquisitive face. One of his eyebrows always rose above his gold-rimmed glasses whenever he read labels aloud to his customers.

  When she was first introduced to La Farmacia Pérez, Ana had hesitated taking advice about her health from a man like Alfonso. He was Peruvian, one of the few she’d met in New York, but he’d grown up in a pueblo joven along the outskirts of Lima, poor and black. And he talked about being black and what it meant to be black and what it meant to be an indio and black. She’d overheard his contained outrage when cops thought a local Dominican boy had a gun or when some of his customers were rounded up like cattle and shoved into trucks. To hell, he’d say, with these abductors, these invaders who killed our fathers, raped our mothers, shoot us like animals, and tell us to get out of our land—all of which made Ana uncomfortable.

  But he was an actual pharmacist, trained in Lima and in the States. He’d arrived in New York decades earlier, and, with the help of a friend, managed to open the pharmacy even while he was still undocumented. It was Lety, a Panamanian mother trying to finish up community college, who eventually got him his green card. Their diplomas hung on the pharmacy wall, and Ana couldn’t help but stare at them each time she was there. They were the only diplomas she’d ever seen.

  On that very first visit, Don Alfonso sold Ana thyroid medication, the same kind she had bought in Lima. She did her best to keep her children from doctors, with their prodding tools and invasive questions. With Don Alfonso’s guidance, she waited out coughs, filled her kids’ bodies with water and sports drinks until whatever infected their systems made its way out. She built up their defenses with daily doses of the good pharmacist’s preferred brand of cod liver oil and bowls of caldo de gallina. He was well-stocked with other medications and treatments as well. Herbal pain killers from Brazil; whitening creams from Colombia and fat-burning gels from Venezuela; even small, blue-tinted bottles of oils, his own concoctions, which attracted luck and money and deflected evil eyes. The pharmacy itself smelled like Palo Santo. Chunks of the tree were laid out throughout the space. Its minty sap, he told her once, helped with allergies.

  But Don Alfonso also had the unmentionables that señoras and señoritas requested only in whispers: something to help the itch and the smell down there, birth control pills, condoms for the ones bold enough to ask their men to put one on.

  “¡Don Alfonso!” Betty exclaimed as they walked toward the Consultas sign.

  “Muchachas, buenas tardes,” he hollered in his crispy voice. They exchanged pleasantries about the holiday, his relatively quiet but expensive Christmas with his daughter and Lety’s nephews, and their plans to go on a boat cruise around Manhattan for New Year’s Eve. He assumed they came to stock up on their regular medication, but then Betty asked to speak to him about “something” and threw Ana a look. She excused herself, but lingered by the shampoos and body washes nearby, keeping a close eye on her friend. Betty’s face was steady, her lips moving quickly as Don Alfonso leaned in. When he spoke, Betty followed his mouth as if he were a fortune-teller.

  When it was her turn, Ana approached Don Alfonso with a nervous smile, said hello again, and fidgeted with the strap on her bag. As if sensing her discomfort, Don Alfonso watched her from over the top of his glasses and whispered, “You came for your pills, right?” She knew he was referring to the right pills. After all, there was no need to whisper about thyroid medication. “When was the last time you took them?” he asked.

  “A few weeks ago,” she stammered.

  He pulled a notebook from behind the counter and flipped through its pages. The notebook had always unnerved her. She wanted nothing more than to stay hidden, untraceable, and here was Alfonso memorializing her visits and what she was consuming. “The last time I gave you any was in . . .” he traced his finger down a list until, apparently, finding the information he was looking for. “November.”

  She stood on her toes and peered over, hoping, as she always did, that he used some kind of code to track her and her medications, but he shut the notebook quickly and slipped it back under the counter.

  “Any chance you could be pregnant?” he asked.

  She shook her head no and looked around to see if anyone had heard his question.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m taking care of myself,” she said.

  “Do you want the full month this time?”

  Again, no. “Two weeks. I’ll come back for the rest.”

  “You said that the last time.” He raised a single eyebrow over his frames. She fiddled with her strap. “Give me fifteen minutes.”

  She lingered by the oils as she waited, away from Betty who had drifted toward the pain relievers. She never asked Betty what she got from Don Alfonso. She assumed it was the same thing she got. Or condoms. Although she’d only been in New York since the summer, Betty was never without a lover. When they were children in Santa Clara, it was Betty who taught her about the part that grows on a man whenever he sees or feels something he likes. It was Betty who giggled, as if she were in on some secret, when Colonel Mejía began visiting Ana’s mother. He was a stocky, pinkish man, always dressed in a uniform that reminded the girls of bijao leaves. It was only later, when Ana caught Betty watching them through her mother’s bedroom window and then crouched down beside her, that she realized what that secret was—what it was exactly that the Colonel and her mother were doing.

  Years later, when Ana was already working at the notaría, Betty made the move to Lima, where she lived with Carla and her young children. By then, the Sendero Luminoso and the military had grown bolder, deepening their presence in the jungle. Teachers were rounded up in the evenings, taken and told what it was they had to teach the children the next day. Bullets shot into the night, some purposeful, most at random. Men and women, especially the girls, were stopped and searched, interrogated, held for days. More and more seemed to disappear. The movement needed soldiers; the soldiers needed bodies. They needed women. Betty had to leave before they needed her.

  The elder Sandoval sister took in the younger but set rules. Skirts had to hit the knees. No heels or perfume
or red lipstick; nothing to suggest she was looking for a fuck. She had to think twice about bringing home any female friends, except for Ana. Ana was a decent girl. She’d somehow managed to get an office job, and it was this that inevitably made her the smokescreen for Betty’s rendezvous with whichever boyfriend she had at the time. There was always one; any more than that just complicated things. They’re easy enough to get, she’d tell Ana. “They’re just animals,” she’d say plainly. Despite living once again under Carla’s scrutiny and her low opinion of the opposite sex, there was no doubt in Ana’s mind that Betty had someone.

  She contemplated broaching the subject on the bus ride back when Lety Pérez tapped her on the shoulder, a white paper bag in her hand. Ana followed her to the register, but instead of ringing her up, Lety only slipped Ana’s money into a box. “Come back in two weeks,” she whispered. “If money’s a problem, we can figure something out.” She slid the white paper bag across the counter and tapped it as she said, “You need to stay on top of this.”

  Ana quickly shoved it inside her handbag and walked back between the aisles to grab Betty, waving farewell to Alfonso and giving Lety a quick nod. “No te olvides,” she called out as the pair exited the store. The two then headed to the slaughterhouse, where Ana had a hen killed and collected a pork shoulder, before hopping back on the bus heading west.

  This time, the bus grew fatter as it pulled itself through the streets. The Spanish dwindled, and soon enough, English overtook the front of the bus. The two sat in silence in the back until they reached the highway underpass, only a few blocks from where Ana was to get off, when Betty asked, “Are you mad at me? About the cigarettes?”