Marcelo in the Real World

by Francisco X. Stork

  Just as she sits down, we hear the sound of glass breaking. She stands up and says, “I be back. Here, I turn on the fan for you.” She goes over to a tall, rusty fan in the corner and clicks a button. She waits until she hears the blades begin to rattle and then she leaves the room. Her plastic sandals make a smacking sound as she walks.

  Out in the hallway, I hear Jerry and Sister Juana speak. Then he leans in the doorway to speak to me.

  “I’ll be back in twenty minutes. The sister just gave me a list of errands.” He waves a piece of paper and disappears.

  I am alone for a few moments when a girl walks in, sees me, and freezes. She looks like a smaller version of Ixtel, only this girl’s face has not been hurt. Her hair is tied in a ponytail and it falls over the front of her shoulder. “Ay! You scared me!” she gasps.

  “Hola,” I say.

  “I speak English,” she responds.

  “Oh. My name is Marcelo,” I say.

  “I’m María,” she says brightly. Now I see the full resemblance to Ixtel. “You’re looking for Ixtel?”

  “Yes,” I answer.

  “She’s upstairs. I’ll get her.” Then she asks, “Do you know how to fix the TV?” She is pointing at the television set with a coat hanger sticking from the top.

  “No.”

  “It is the stupid antenna,” she goes on, not paying attention to me.

  We hear an angry scream from the room across the hall. María sticks her fingers in her ears and grimaces. “Is Ixtel your sister?” I ask when she unplugs her ears.

  “Not real, real sister. She is everyone’s sister.”

  “Do you live here?” I am nervous and am speaking out my thoughts as they first appear.

  She looks at me. “You ask crazy questions. I’ll go tell Ixtel her boyfriend is here.” I think she’s kidding. She walks out of the room, lightly and quickly, like someone who is happy.

  In a few minutes, I will see Ixtel, I think. I can’t remember any of the things I practiced saying to her. I go up to the wooden crucifix and touch it. The Christ that hangs on it is made of bronze and his head does not slump on his chest the way it usually does.

  “Come outside, is hot in here.” Sister Juana is in the doorway, wiping her hands on a white apron.

  We walk through a hallway lit by a single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling and out a screen door in the back of the house. We are in a garden. I see small trees heavy with pears and taller trees with pink and lavender flowers. Almost every inch of the yard, except for the stone paths that cut vertically and horizontally, is filled with roses of different colors. Sister Juana holds my arm as she leads me to a small fountain in the middle of the garden where there is a stone bench. I see the leaves of trees move at the same time that I feel a breeze cool my face. The garden is surrounded on all sides by the walls of buildings, and I wonder how it is that a breeze has managed to enter and flow.

  We sit side by side on the bench. Sister Juana is breathing deeply as if to make sure that the scent of roses reaches the bottom of her lungs. On the opposite side of the garden from where we entered it, there is another door. I do not fully understand the nature of this place that seems in part a jail and in part a church. Perhaps I should inquire about it, but there is something about asking questions just then that seems inappropriate.

  After another deep breath, Sister Juana speaks. “This house once was from rich family. When last daughter die, she leave it to us. Is a big house. Now some nights we have forty girls. In rich family there only four live here. Father, mother, and two daughters. And maybe five servants.” She laughs. “Imagine.”

  “Forty girls,” I say to myself out loud.

  “Me, Ixtel, Sister Camila and Sister Guadalupe, and María you just met, we are, how you say, permanent. There are so many, many more girls out there and we have this only.” She glances at the walls as if noticing for the first time how small the house is. She goes on, “We not force the girls to come, they must want to come here. Some come for a few days only and then go out for more drugs, more abuse. Some like Ixtel do not have homes.”

  “Are the girls happy here?” I don’t know why this question pops up in my mind.

  “Happy?” It’s like she never heard the word before. “This is safe place where they can be safe for a while. That is all we can do.”

  I feel Ixtel’s presence a second before the screen door opens. “Ah, there is our Ixtel,” Sister Juana says. She struggles to stand up.

  I see Ixtel walk quickly toward me like I am someone she hasn’t seen in a long time. She is wearing khaki slacks and a white button-down short-sleeve shirt. As she draws nearer, I recognize the delicate features on one side of her face: the eyebrows, the eyes, the forehead, all as in her picture, but also different. I try to determine what is different about her. Her face is calmer. The eyes that pierced through me in the picture are softer.

  “I go now,” Sister Juana says when Ixtel stops in front of us.

  We watch Juana hobble away, pausing once to lift up a drooping rose. When we see her disappear into the house, Ixtel sits on the bench and waits for me. I feel a sudden fear that I may have lost the ability to speak.

  “You’re Marcelo,” she says, reminding me of who I am.

  “Marcelo,” I repeat.

  “It’s okay, you can look at me, I don’t mind.”

  I don’t know why she says this at first and then I understand. “I always have trouble looking people in the eye. Not just Ixtel.”

  “You’ve seen me before anyway. In the picture.”

  “Yes.”

  There is a pause. It seems like so much has happened since I first saw her picture.

  “Did Jerry tell you that the surgery has been scheduled?”

  “No.”

  “No? He must have wanted me to tell you. First the reconstructive surgery, and then when that heals, the cosmetic part to make me look like a movie star.” She smiles with one side of her mouth. She is sitting on my left so that I see the good side of her face when I look at her.

  “Ixtel is already beautiful,” I say. This time it is hard to keep my eyes on her.

  “You ever have anyone do something so good for you that you feel bad because there is no way to thank them? You say the words ‘thank you,’ but they don’t seem enough. That’s how I feel. But anyway, I’ll say it. Thank you.”

  I don’t know what to say. If “thank you” is not enough, then neither is “you’re welcome,” but I say it anyway. “You’re welcome.”

  I inhale deeply. The fragrance of the roses reminds me of Abba. She grew roses in our backyard. I bend down to look closely at a rose that is a color I have never seen before. It is not one color but various shades of white and pink and even violet on the rim of the petals. The drops of dew remind me of Aurora.

  “The roses are full of dew.” It is the only thing I can think of saying.

  “Sister Juana is the rose expert. She mixes and matches roses trying to invent a new color. She tries to get us to help her but no one wants to. Even with gloves on, we get all scratched up with thorns.”

  “My grandmother liked roses. She planted them all over our yard. Once, when I was a small child, she asked if I wanted to see something special. She got this thing from the kitchen that looked like a giant eyedropper. I forget the name of the utensil.”

  “A baster. The big eyedropper thing is called a baster.”

  “A baster? I did not know.”

  “Trust me, I know about basters. Cooking is something we do a lot here.”

  “Abba, that’s what we called my grandmother, filled the baster with water and sugar and made me sit in the middle of the roses. She told me that if I held the baster very still in front me, squeezing it just enough for a drop to form at its end, a hummingbird would come and feed from it.”

  “And did one?”

  “Yes. After a while a hummingbird came. It was amazing to see one so close. Its wings were moving so fast they seemed to be still.”

  “T
hat’s neat. You were like St. Francis over there.” She points to a cement statue of St. Francis hidden in the rosebushes. The stone bird that sits on his shoulder does not have a head.

  There must be a proper response I can make to that statement, but instead I ask: “Are you happy here?”

  She looks at the roses and then at the walls enclosing the garden. “This is a good place. I didn’t think so when I first came. After the car accident I was very bad. I was fourteen and I was on the street on my own. Even with this face I could sell myself easy. Maybe they thought it was good to make it with a freak. And there were drugs. There’s so many ways to hurt yourself if you want to. Finally, Social Services brought me here. I hated it.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “Almost a year. When I turned sixteen, I could have left. But I stayed. Look at this.” She points to the walls that surround the garden. “It’s kinda like being sent to rehab and then staying for good. Now I feel like this is where I belong. I must be crazy. And the people who come here are no angels—that’s for sure. They’re all like me when I first got here. ‘Get me the hell out of here. I need my fix.’”

  “But how did you change? What happened? What made you different?”

  We both turn to look at each other at the same time. I can feel her wondering why I want to know. Maybe she can see that I’m not asking just out of curiosity or to make small talk. I’m asking because I want to find what she found.

  “Little by little, I don’t know, what was eating me up went away.”

  “But how did it go away? What did you do?”

  “Like, at the beginning, I felt sorry for myself, I guess. Not like, you know, pity or anything. But then one day I stopped being so angry. ‘You’re just a little girl,’ I said to myself. ‘It’s not your fault your parents died. It’s okay you messed up. It’s okay to be angry about your face and hate everyone. You’re just a little girl. I forgive you, little girl, for all the bad things you did.’ Like that. It’s crazy, isn’t it? To have one part of your self be nice to another part. Like the nice part of my face saying nice things to the ugly part. After a while, the nice part and the ugly part stopped hating each other. There was peace inside of me, like the different parts disappeared and there was only one me. After that, I saw how the other girls were like me, and I started doing the same thing with them. I saw their ugly parts—and around here that’s not too hard, believe me—and I tried to be nice to their ugly parts.”

  Then it comes to me. It cannot be that this is the first time I realized this, but it is. We all have ugly parts. I think of the time in the cafeteria when Jasmine asked me what the girl in the picture was asking me. How do we live with all the suffering? We see our ugly parts, and then we are able to forgive, love kindness, walk humbly.

  “We all have ugly parts,” I say to myself, forgetting for a moment that Ixtel is sitting next to me.

  She gives a short laugh that sounds like a cough because of the shape of her mouth. “You say that as if you never knew it.”

  “I never knew it like I do now.”

  “Do you have any? Ugly parts, I mean,” she asks, looking at me intently.

  I feel what must be shame at the fact that I have to think very hard before I find an answer. “Is not seeing any ugly parts in myself an ugly part? Is not wanting to forgive someone’s ugly parts an ugly part in oneself?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t understand a word you said, but yeah.”

  She laughs her laugh that sounds like a cough again and I rock back and forth on the bench, the way I do when I finally understand something that was obscured.

  “What will you do after the surgery?” I ask.

  “The same as now. I missed a year of high school while I was being crazy. I need to catch up.”

  “Do you want to go to college?”

  “Man, that’s so far ahead. I gotta make sure I stay clean, finish high school, help the sisters. Besides, I never was that smart to begin with, and the drugs sure didn’t help.”

  We hear Jerry García’s voice through the screen door and we both stand at the same time. “It was good to meet you,” I say. I turn to face her and stretch out my hand, but she doesn’t take it.

  “Would it be okay if I gave you a kiss?” she asks.

  Without thinking about it, I lower my head the way I do for Aurora, and she kisses me on the forehead.

  “It’s half a kiss,” she says, “but it’s all I got.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Aurora picks me up at the train station. She doesn’t ask why I’m coming home earlier than usual. She knows that I’ve been fired. She thinks my silence is sadness at the fact that I will not be going to Paterson. But I wouldn’t call what I feel sadness. It is more like resolve.

  When we get home and she turns off the car, she asks me if I want to talk about it.

  “Not right now,” I say.

  “I would like to hear about what happened from you.”

  “Arturo is right. It is better for me to go to Oak Ridge High.” I can feel her eyes scanning me. “It is all right,” I say. “Maybe I can work with the ponies on the weekends.”

  “You’re not upset?”

  “No.”

  “We can talk to your father.”

  “Oak Ridge High will be better. I will not like it as much as Paterson, but it will be better.”

  “Why the change?”

  “Aurora was right when she told me that working at the law firm would help me be strong. Remember? Gentle and strong, like Aurora. Oak Ridge will help me as well.”

  “Help you for what?”

  “Aurora already knows. That has not changed.”

  Aurora wants to ask me more questions, I can tell, but I open the car door and hug Namu, who is waiting for me to greet him. This is a sign to her that I want to be alone. Aurora touches the top of my head and goes in the house. Then Namu and I go for a walk and when we get home, there is a note from Aurora under the tree house.

  Dinner is on top of the stove. Whenever you want to talk, I’m here.

  Love you,

  Mom

  From the window of the tree house, I can see her moving about in the kitchen, perhaps making my lunch for my last day of work. I look at her and there is a wrenching, as if my heart were a sponge full of love being squeezed. Tomorrow she will get up in the morning and put on that silly uniform with the green smiley faces and she will go to comfort as best she can her dying children.

  Why the change? I thought about her question as Namu and I walked on the horse trails behind our house and I think about it now as I sit at my desk. For all the pain I saw at Paterson, it is nothing compared to the pain that people inflict upon each other in the real world. All I can think of now is that it is not right for me to be unaware of that pain, including the pain that I inflict on others. Only how is it possible to live without being either numb to it or overwhelmed by it?

  I see the light in the kitchen go off and I picture Aurora making her way up the stairs. I think that maybe I will move back to my room in the house. I never thought of Aurora as being lonely, but why wouldn’t she be? What is it like to have a son who is perfectly content living on his own, without any need or desire to communicate; a daughter who is away; a husband who works all the time? What will happen if Wendell sends a copy of Jasmine’s letter to Aurora? I don’t know. We will all have to figure it out together.

  Faithful. Faith-full. Full-of-faith. If the letter comes, will it help Arturo and Aurora remain faithful to each other if I am full of faith? My father. Are your ugly parts any uglier than mine?

  There is so much to be done. Plans. Preparations. Oak Ridge High will be hard. As good as Paterson was, I know we lagged behind students in public schools in certain subjects. Public school students study in order to pass standardized tests. We studied what needed to be learned. I will need to learn the way they learn and this means working twice as hard as a regular student. It will mean contact with kids with whom I don’t have much in common. B
ut it can be done. I will do it. Going to Oak Ridge High will help me.

  Help you for what? Aurora asked. I missed an opportunity to tell her that it would help me to be like her. That the way she is strong and gentle on behalf of children will be my way as well. The road seems so long. Another year of high school, then college, then a degree in nursing and then work—doing what I can to lessen the hurt in the world. But where? There has to be a place where I belong.

  I think of Vermont. The stars there seemed closer to the earth. I go to my desk and click on my laptop. There is some research I need to do.

  CHAPTER 31

  The first thing I see when I enter Robert Steely’s office is an envelope with my name on it. I recognize the handwriting. It is Arturo’s. I sit down and hold it in my hands. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to open it. I want to get through the day with the same resolve I had yesterday. I put the envelope down. Then I pick it up and open it with a letter opener I find in the top drawer of the desk. I read:

  Marcelo,

  I feel it is necessary to respond to the note you gave me yesterday. First of all, don’t misunderstand this letter. I still think that giving the Vidromek memo to Jerry García was ill-advised. I’m treating Jasmine’s note as a separate matter.

  There are certain boundaries that need to be maintained between an employer and an employee, between an older man and a young woman, between a man and a woman who is under the influence of alcohol, between a married man and another woman. A year ago at the Christmas party I crossed all those boundaries. I wish I could tell you that I recognized this error as soon as it occurred, but the fact of the matter is that I always considered the events of that evening a minor transgression. It was only yesterday, when I read Jasmine’s note the way you would read it, that I recognized the extent of my lack of judgment.

  I hope you understand the nature and the reason for this letter.

  Your Father