The Affairs of the Falcóns

by Melissa Rivero

  For days after Lucho lost his job, she kept a close eye on it. But it wasn’t until now that she noticed the rolls of fabric that seemed to block it. Had they always been there?

  She walked over and began to move them. Betty helped her lay the rolls against the others that had accumulated by the wall. Ana turned the knob, cold and dented, and the door clicked open. It was heavy, and she struggled to open it. Betty slid her hands between the door and the frame and helped her pull. “Esta puerta está más pesada que un matrimonio mal llevado,” she said, and the women laughed nervously. Ana peered into the stairwell. Dark, but there was enough light that she could see the steps that led down to the floor below.

  She went back to her station, satisfied that she could fit through the narrow spaces between the islands and make her way to the door in a matter of seconds. And then there were the handbags. If only the women kept them underneath their feet instead of in the gaps. But the handbags were easy. She could simply kick or jump over them. It was the other bodies that worried her. If immigration came, would she have to shove her way around dozens of women in a panic, or just sweep past those frozen in fear? There’d be other workers on the stairs, from the third, second, first floors. She’d have to maneuver around them as well. And they weren’t all undocumented. Some had papers, like Carla. Maybe they’d step aside to let her and the others through. Whether bag or body, she’d do what she needed to get out of there, claw through the Carlas and even climb over the Bettys in the room if she had to.

  Soon, the trilling of the machines and the moaning of the fans drowned her thoughts, and she raced through fabric after fabric. By lunch, Nilda was already forgotten. Instead, the women chatted about a Colombian telenovela, far better than the Mexican one that played at the same time on another channel. They spoke of the relatively mild winter. This snowfall was the first of the season—at least now all that money spent on coats that looked like caskets wouldn’t go to waste. They wondered if George and Olga would spend New Year’s Eve together. No one spoke of Nilda. It was pointless to talk about someone they’d never see again.

  * * *

  THAT AFTERNOON, AS THE WOMEN LEFT THEIR STATIONS BOUND FOR home, Ana managed to grab ahold of Betty. The snow had stopped falling, giving way to a clear, reddening sky. The air was still, except for the occasional gust that interrupted the flow of costureras making their way to the bus and train stations. She and Betty marched along with them, walking past the train station’s entrance. They leaned against the white letters and hot pink borders that ignited the black facade of the graffitied bodega wall.

  “Is everything okay with Carla and Ernesto?” she asked.

  Betty unwrapped her scarf and took off her gloves, digging into her pocket for a cigarette. “Same as always. He likes to spend money they don’t have. She’ll do whatever just to keep him happy. That’s love, I guess.”

  “But he treats her well,” Ana said. “From what I saw back when I lived with them. They argued like every couple does, but they always seemed to work things out.”

  “I guess.” She shrugged.

  “Sad, no?” said Ana. “What happened with Nilda?”

  “That’s what happens when you’re sloppy,” she said as she lit a cigarette. “But you didn’t ask me here to talk about her or Carla. Is everything okay? You sounded a bit agitated on the phone last night.”

  Ana cleared her throat. “Yes, and no,” she said. “We’re going to take Sully’s apartment.”

  “He sucks, but congratulations!” She nudged Ana gently on her arm. “Starting off the new year right.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “The building is old, but he’s fixing up the apartment. It’s a railroad, but a good size. Close to everything. The problem is he wants three months’ rent. We’ve only got enough for two.”

  “Three months? I knew he sucked,” she said. “You should ask George for overtime. I’m sure he’ll need it with Nilda gone.” Then she whispered, “You could use some of that money you’ve set aside.”

  Betty knew about the money. It was, after all, something she’d advised Carla to do years before, in case Ernesto never came through with his promise to marry her. What if he left her there in New York, alone with no papers? What if she was deported, sent back to Peru and saddled with the three children? What was she supposed to do then? It was a concern Betty had expressed to Ana over and over during Carla’s early years in New York. Carla sent back money every month for the children and, eventually, each remittance included a little bit extra for Betty to set aside in case Carla ended up back in Peru with no green card and no husband. It wasn’t until a year after he divorced the American woman and had his green card that Ernesto finally married Carla.

  “I don’t want to,” said Ana. “But I don’t have much of a choice. We’ve been at Valeria’s for months. It’s clear she wants us out. I was hoping we could wait a little longer, but Lucho’s set on leaving. And he’s right. The longer we stay, the longer she’ll try to convince him this is a bad idea. She keeps talking about how we should send the kids back to live with his mother. Lucho actually thinks we should.”

  “I can see why,” said Betty. “It’d be a lot easier if it were just the two of you. You could rent a room or even a studio. You wouldn’t have to pay that tuition. It’d be a lot cheaper to educate them over there.”

  “Betty, no one’s raising my children but me.”

  “Then go back with them. For a little while at least.”

  “Why do you all of a sudden want me to leave?”

  “I don’t,” she said. “I just see Valeria’s point, that’s all. I know why you don’t want to leave the kids. They’re not that little anymore. They’ll remember that you left them. And I can even see why you don’t want to leave Lucho. Men forget their responsibilities unless they’re right in their faces. You see how Ernesto practically forgot he had a family. And my sister was here!” She paused, tapping lightly on her cigarette. “But Lucho’s not Ernesto. He wouldn’t disappear on you.”

  “Exactly, so I’m not going to disappear on him.”

  “Okay,” she said. “So why’d you bring me out here if you don’t want my advice?”

  “Because I need your help.”

  The street grew quiet, even as passing trains rumbled beneath their feet. The sound of a shovel scraping against the concrete echoed rhythmically somewhere in the distance. For Ana, the world seemed to slow.

  “What is it?” Betty asked.

  Ana’s palms began to sweat. She swallowed the cool, sharp air. “Can you get me those pills?”

  Betty cocked her head and pursed her lips. “What pills?”

  “The ones you talked about the other day,” she said. “The ones that make your period come.”

  Two lines formed between Betty’s eyebrows. “How long has it been?”

  Ana pressed her lips. “End of October.”

  “So two months?” said Betty. “You missed two periods and now you want to take care of this?”

  “I’ve never been regular,” said Ana. “Can you keep your voice—?”

  “Does Lucho know?”

  She bowed her head as a gust suddenly hit them, picking up snow from the ground. She lifted her scarf, covering half of her face, and mumbled, “No.”

  Betty whispered, “Can you tell me why?”

  Ana looked at her, puzzled. She never had to explain herself to Betty. Even when she confessed, all those years ago, that she had been seeing Lucho, Betty only listened and never gave an opinion. When Ana told her she was going to marry him, Betty didn’t question how fast the proposal came, not even after Ana gave birth to Victoria seven months later. She never had to justify her actions to Betty and had no intention of doing so now. “Does it matter?”

  “I just want to understand why,” she replied. “It’s not like you’re a kid. Nobody raped you. You’re married. You’ve got a family. You have a job.”

  “Yes, and those are all the reasons why. You see how my life is here. Do you think I n
eed to add to that?”

  “Is that why?” she asked. “Or are you messing around again?” Ana glared at her. “Oh come on. It’s not a new thing for you. That’s how you ended up with Lucho. You cheated on your boyfriend with his brother.” She snickered. “How original.”

  “I never cheated on Carlos,” she said firmly. “We were over.”

  The accusation had been leveled at her before, in the months after Carlos left for Madrid. Their relationship had only lasted a few months, but in that time, he’d introduced her to his mother and Lucho, a step that indicated a level of seriousness that she hadn’t expected. She didn’t quite feel for Carlos what she saw between her mother and father. He was formal and serious, devoted so much to the study of law that she came to accept her place in his life, behind his profession and his mother, and possibly a couple of his friends. He was curious about her life in Santa Clara. He had a calmness about him that made her feel at ease, but never enough to speak to him about Colonel Mejía and the other men who visited her mother after her father disappeared. He never asked her about what she envisioned her life to be in the future. It was a contrast to the ferocity she saw in Lucho, who was not the intellectual that his younger brother was. He understood that rules and orders can only do so much in practice. It wasn’t love exactly that she felt for Carlos, but there was a cautious affection, one she thought could perhaps grow more certain with time.

  Then a university in Madrid offered Carlos a scholarship. There was never an understanding that they’d keep the relationship going after he left. He had to focus on his post-graduate studies to keep his scholarship, and although the program was only for two years, he had every intention of finding work there afterward. Their relationship ended awkwardly but cordially.

  It was how quickly she and Lucho got together later that gave everyone pause.

  “You’re starting to sound a lot like Valeria,” she said.

  “Valeria,” Betty repeated. “She was gone for a whole month and you were spending all that time with her husband.”

  “Don’t start making up stories, Betty,” she said. “There’s nothing going on between me and Rubén, so get that idea out of your head. Besides, I shouldn’t have to defend myself to you. You, of all people! You’ve been here long enough now. You see how it is, everything you’ve got to do just to keep food on the table. And now Lucho’s talking about sending the kids back.”

  “Back to live with his mother. Of course, you can’t do that. Not with your past.”

  “At least no one here looks at me like I’m a cockroach.”

  “Everyone here looks at us like we’re cockroaches, Ana.”

  “I’d rather strangers look at me that way than my own children.” Her throat tightened. All her life, she’d been made to feel small and inconsequential. Whenever the feeling was too much to bear, she ran. Outside of Santa Clara, her skin, her hair, the way she spoke—all of it only exacerbated those feelings. She couldn’t help but fall into the trap. Lose that accent, lighten those strands. Marry up. Marry light.

  But marrying Lucho only reinforced how little the world thought of her. She was now the chola in the family. His mother, she feared, would make her children feel small because of their hair and skin; she’d most certainly make them feel that their mother was nothing.

  And so Ana had to run again, this time, from Peru entirely. New York was another chance at reinvention. She could be someone new, her marriage something different, something better in a new place. Where she was born didn’t matter; who her parents were or weren’t didn’t matter. She could stay outside in the sun and burn to crisp if she wanted to. All that mattered was how hard she worked, how she kept her home a home, that she might someday, however unlikely it might be, open up that restaurant. It might all, somehow, erase the very things that made her seem so discardable to others, including Doña Filomena and the rest of los Falcón.

  “Betty, please,” she said. “Carla helped you. She got you out of that situation and now I need to get out of mine. Don’t judge me for making the same choice you made.”

  “It’s not the same, Ana,” she snapped. She compressed her lips, shut her eyes for a moment to steady her breathing. She then pulled out her packet of cigarettes. “The Colonel and his men,” she said, as she gave it several hard taps against her palm. “After your mother was gone, after you were gone, I was the only one left.” Her jaw began to quiver. “You think they gave me a choice?” She put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it. She took several deep drags as her breath steadied. She rested against the black wall, the white letters swirling around her. “You got to leave. Right before things got bad. You left. You’re the one who has a choice, Ana. I never had one.”

  The ground shuddered as a train barreled through the concrete below. After she’d found her mother’s body, Ana ran to Betty’s house and the next day, her Tía Ofelia came for her. They were on a bus to Lima in a matter of days. The trip along the carretera—the road that cut through the Andes toward the Pacific—was more than twenty-four hours long. It was not a place for a woman or a child, Tía Ofelia had told her. The bus might get stopped, the passengers raped or robbed or worse, but it was what she could afford.

  All Ana wanted was to get out. She kept her mother’s prayer card in her pocket, clutching it whenever the bus stopped to pick up passengers along the road or when the driver needed to step outside to defecate. He drove through the night, a jagged jaunt through the mountains that made the only other child on the bus vomit.

  When they got to Lima without incident, Ana kissed her mother’s card and vowed to never look back.

  It was only when Betty moved to Lima and called her that Ana thought of her again. She hadn’t had a choice, she wanted to tell Betty. She had to forget. She didn’t have a choice now either, not under the circumstances. But what was that choice compared to what Betty had gone through?

  “I’m just asking for your help,” she pleaded. “Help me stay here and take care of my children. They need me, and I need them.”

  The church bell rang, and Betty let out a long, deep breath. Ana wondered now if she’d made a mistake asking her for help. They were still, in most ways, confined to the same world they left behind. They were still the cholitas, the invaders. Still unwelcome. Yet neither was the same person. If the circumstances in their lives were different, Ana wondered if they’d still be friends.

  Betty tossed her cigarette on the floor and bit her lower lip before relenting. “Give me a day or two,” she said. “I’m not sure how much—”

  “Thank you,” said Ana, clasping her hands together in prayer. She then pulled out her wallet and handed Betty several twenty-dollar bills. “Let me know if you need more.”

  “This should be enough,” she said. She tucked the money in her pocket, then rewrapped her scarf along her face, a sign that she was ready for the long walk home.

  “Can you tell me,” said Ana, holding her back as she was about to turn, “what it’s like?”

  Betty didn’t look at her when she spoke. “The worst will be the first day or two. You’ll have to start taking the pills after the kids are asleep. Valeria and Rubén’ll be in bed too. Lucho will be gone. No one will notice.”

  That night, Ana gave the rest of the money in Liliana’s hollow body to Lucho. She told him Mama had agreed to lend them the money. He looked surprised, but didn’t question her. They had enough now to pay Sully.

  She took a moment to light a candle and kneel in front of her altar. She placed the doll beside the Virgin Mary and her mother’s prayer card. She’d have to start saving all over again. She closed her eyes and prayed. She prayed for Nilda and her son. She prayed for her own children. She prayed that Betty would get her what she needed soon.

  She prayed for a way to stop running.

  11

  ON NEW YEAR’S EVE, ANA SAT IN FRONT OF THE VANITY MIRROR IN her room, dressed in a thin-strapped, blood-orange dress that hit her knees and wearing gold impostors that sang in her ears. Her reflection
was encircled by a halo of yellow bulbs that surrounded the oval mirror. She didn’t recognize the woman she saw. The lines on her face insisted on staying put, even when she didn’t smile or squint. Her cheeks sprouted two new pimples. She’d covered the cracks on her lips with petroleum jelly, and the blisters on her hands with freesia-scented cream, but her skin still peeled, and her fingertips were still dented.

  She was in there somewhere, but the effort it’d take to lure out the woman she thought she was already exhausted her. It wasn’t the makeup application or the hair styling or forcing herself into her faja that was daunting, but how much longer it took to fill in her eyebrows, how more and more eyelashes clung to the rim of her curler each time she pressed it, how the stretch marks that ran across her lower abdomen crept closer and closer toward her belly button. She noticed tiny hairs sprouting along the edges of her forehead. She hadn’t realized that she’d lost so many strands.

  But she was determined to make the most out of the night. She’d say goodbye to whatever sadness and worry plagued the end of her year. That, she decided, was something to be grateful for. At least she’d do her best to pretend everything was fine.

  She was pinning back her curled hair when Lucho entered the room. “¿Y adónde vas tan bien vestida?” he asked. His eyes stayed on her as he shut the door behind him. He walked behind her chair and leaned onto the edge of the vanity, locking her in. The mint in his bath soap clung to his T-shirt and flannel pants. He traced her neck with his breath. His lips skimmed her skin, and she shifted, subtly, away from them.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She cleared her throat and forced a smile. “I think I might be coming down with something,” she said, looking away. She couldn’t look at the reflection of his eyes beside hers in the mirror.

  “Sully’s away for the holiday,” he said as he walked to the bed. “But we should have everything settled by the end of the week.” He inspected the black trousers and the ivory sweater she’d laid out for him, then opened the shoebox beside them. His black tassel loafers were inside. He scrunched his face and traced a finger along the edges of the pants, edges so sharp she thought they’d still burn from her iron.