Bulletproof Vest (27 page)

“This is the room where I was born,” I tell Martin, who is standing behind me, observing the portraits on the walls.

“Amazing,” he says, taking the room in. “Man, you are so lucky that your parents left this place when they did.” He puts his arm around me. “Can you imagine if you had been raised here?”

He's right. By simply having crossed the border, I had leaped ahead generations.

*   *   *

When we arrive at the depot, people are already boarding. We pull our backpacks out from the back of my father's truck and throw them under the bus next to plastic crates tied with rope, boxes bound with twine, and vinyl bags sealed shut with duct tape. I sling the blue duffel bag that has the wooden saddle in it over my shoulder and we get in line.

“You should put that with the luggage so you don't have to carry it the whole way,” my father says.

“That's okay,” I say. “I don't want it to break.”

A man has parked his fruit cart in front of the depot; cups filled with sliced coconut, mango, papaya, and watermelon line the front of his cart. He squeezes a fresh lime onto one, sprinkles it with chili powder, and hands it to a woman. They both seem oblivious to the flies and bees swarming around them.

“Do you want a fruit cup for the ride?” my father asks.

“No, thank you,” I say, as the line moves forward. I'm aware of how everyone is stealing glances at Martin.

“Um, cómo se dice, ‘it was nice meeting you'?” Martin asks.

“Gusto en conocerlo,” I say.

Martin turns to face my father and repeats this line. They shake hands, my father gives him a nod, and Martin boards the bus.

“Ándele pues, mija,” my father says as the last few passengers squeeze past us and onto the bus. “You know that whenever you want to come back, my home is your home.” He suggests I take his address and phone number. I grab a notebook and a pen out of my straw bag and jot down the address for La Peña. It's the same address where I used to send my brother's letters. The same address where Sonia had sent my father the letter I never meant to send—years from now, Alma will tell me that when they had first moved in with him, after having one too many drinks, sometimes he would start crying and saying that his own daughter had sent him a letter saying she wished he was dead.

“I'll write to you,” I say, though I know I won't.

“I'll be waiting for your letter.” A faint smile flashes across his face. His eyes glaze over, his chin starts quivering, and he presses his lips tight, forcing the tears to recede. “We should try and keep in touch while we still can,” he says, “while we're still alive.”

We give each other a quick one-handed hug, and our faces brush past one another. His cheek is at once warm and smooth, yet rough with stubble. I give him a nod and board the bus, take the seat next to Martin, place the duffel bag on my lap, and I'm already having a hard time drawing an easy breath. His sudden display of emotion caught me off guard. I thought we would shake hands, go our separate ways, and that would be the end of it. But the sight of his chin quivering shattered something inside of me.

The bus pulls out of the depot and I lean over Martin to look out the window. My father is still standing in the gravel lot, holding a red handkerchief. We catch each other's eye, and I wave at him. He waves back. The bus pulls away and he's left standing in a cloud of dust. I start fumbling around in my straw bag for my sunglasses and put them on, because no matter how hard I try, I can't force my tears to recede.

Martin hands me a wad of toilet paper, takes my hand, and the minute we clear the last speed bump on the edge of town, the bus gets a flat tire.

 

17

THE MUSEUM

 

 

FIVE YEARS LATER
, I return to visit him. I fly to Chicago, and from there I drive down to Valparaíso with Roselia and my mother. By then, my mother is spending most of her time in Valparaíso with my grandmother. We stop off in Real de Catorce on the way, an old silver mining town that Martin and I had talked about visiting, though we had never gotten around to it. After I'd been in New York for a year, I had found us a one-bedroom apartment, and for yet another year I had waited for him. But something always seemed to come up with his band—they were recording another album or doing one more tour. I finally called him and told him I had booked a flight to Chicago for the weekend and needed to speak with him.

“About what?” he asked.

“It's nothing,” I said. “Really, I just need to speak with you in person. That's all.” I could have said, “It's been two fucking years.” I could have said, “My feelings have changed.” I could have said any number of things, but back then I was unable to articulate something I could barely admit to myself.

The next day, while I was gathering my things at work and getting ready to go home, he came through the glass doors of the showroom and walked right up to my desk.

“Don't do this,” he said before I had a chance to say anything. But it was already done. Two years was not such a long time, though it was long enough.

That same summer I received a phone call from one of Abigail's friends. After spending a year in New York, Abigail had returned to Maine to find that the gallery owner still hadn't finalized his divorce. He was having second thoughts, had started pushing her away. The last time I had talked to Abigail, she had been sitting on the edge of her bed, and though she could see the sun was shining, she could not muster the energy to go outside.

“I feel numb, I feel numb, I just feel so numb,” she kept saying, aware of how wrong it was: that her sister had just had a baby, that she was now an aunt, and that she didn't care—she didn't feel anything at all.

I had suggested she consider going off the meds. That perhaps they were impeding her ability to feel. Besides, she wasn't so much depressed as she was heartbroken, and if that coward was having second thoughts, so be it. Eventually, she'd find someone who would truly appreciate her. But she didn't want anyone else, she only wanted the man she had been building her life around for the past two years. She called me a few days later and was in better spirits, said she had gone to see a psychiatrist who had lowered her dosage. Then, about two weeks after that, I got the call.

“Oh, Maria, I don't know how to say this,” her friend said. “But Abigail is dead.”

Dead. There was that awful word from which there was no return—dead. It was her mother who had found her. Abigail was facedown on her living room floor, her arms folded above her head as if she had become overwhelmed with fatigue and had decided to lie down for a nap, right there on the cool floorboards. Her face and body were bruised, and a single thread of blood had escaped from her nose. An autopsy revealed that she had been seizing for hours before suffering a brain aneurysm.

Years later, her mother would tell me that there was a history of seizures in her family, from her husband's side. And the meds Abigail was on were known to cause seizures, especially during that critical window of increasing or decreasing doses, though perhaps Abigail had been unaware of this family history, given her fractured relationship with her father. He had left with his lover when Abigail was still in high school, and though she would often call and make plans with him—to go see a movie or go out for dinner—time and time again he had blown her off, had left her waiting. Her fractured relationship with her father was something I'd been unaware of, as neither of us ever talked about our fathers.

Losing Abigail not only forced me to question what I was doing with my life, it also made me rethink my relationship with my own father. For years, he had been my best-kept secret, and though I never talked about him or the past, my writing had started gravitating toward him. Though I was working full-time, I had continued taking acting and writing classes in the evenings. Acting may have been the craft through which I had accessed my emotions, but writing was the tool through which I had begun to reckon with the source of those emotions.

After writing a short story about how my father had shot the neighbor, the instructor suggested I apply to an MFA program. I applied to Iowa, Hunter, and Columbia. By then I was working as an account executive at Juicy Couture and had a high salary, a clothing allowance, a 401K, health insurance, an assistant, and my own office on the sixteenth floor of the Empire State Building. I was accepted to all three programs, resigned from my post, and practically hightailed it back to Mexico.

It's early May when we arrive in Valparaíso, and after Roselia leaves, I spend two weeks in town with my mother and Tito. On the day before I leave for La Peña, we go visit a small museum in town. A room in the back of the museum has the remains of a prehistoric mammal. They sit inside a glass case, along with a card that explains how an elderly man from a nearby ranch had uncovered the bones while digging near the river and donated them to the museum.

Tito and I stroll through the main room, where there is an array of antiques—a phonograph, a typewriter, men's shaving gadgets, and reading glasses. A cobalt-blue wooden trunk sits near the doorway, and on top of it are several irons, ranging from three to eight pounds. On the far wall are several framed photographs with a sign written above them that reads
HACIENDAS DE VALPARAÍSO
.

“That is the entrance to La Peña,” Tito says, leaning in for a closer look at one of the frames. It's a black-and-white photo of the pillars that stand at the entrance to La Peña. “La Paña. That's what you used to call it because you couldn't pronounce it,” she says, adjusting her headscarf. “You probably don't remember, but after your parents left, not a day went by without you asking about them. Every single day you asked me to take you back to La Peña, and every day I explained to you that your parents were no longer there, but I don't know, I guess you were just too young to understand. The others were older, they understood what was happening, but not you, and it got to the point where you would ask anyone who came by the house if they had seen your mami, papi, and Jorgito. If we went to the mercado, la plaza, la panadería—you were asking people if they had seen them. They gave you a dulce de leche, a chicle, anything to get your mind off them, because everyone knew that your parents had gone to the other side.

“The day came when they had been gone for three months and still, first thing in the morning, you were asking me to take you to La Peña, and, well, what was I to do? I took you back there, to that house where you were born, so you could see for yourself, and once you saw that they weren't there, never again did you ask about them—nunca. After that day, you stopped talking altogether. You were so smart, you already knew how to say everything, but for about two weeks you didn't utter a single word. Not to me, or anyone,” she says, still examining the photo, and I'm aware of a vague pain in my arm where my nails are digging so hard that they might be drawing blood. “Those pillars probably aren't even there anymore, huh? They've probably crumbled by now,” she says, glancing back at me.

“No,” I say, staring at the photo, which wants to blur behind the glass, but I refuse to let it. “They're still there.”

She looks back at the photo and carries on, as if she were speaking to it instead of me.

“When your parents finally sent for you, you didn't want to go. It had been two years, and by then you were so attached to me that you didn't want to leave. But imagine if I had kept you here? One day, you would have grown up and resented me for it. On the day that you left, we took you kids to your grandparents' house. You know, the one that used to sit in the plaza, the one your grandparents sold after everything happened with Manuel? You probably don't remember, but that's where you left from, and Manuel went with you. He hadn't planned on staying on the other side, but your father talked him into it. He stayed and worked for a bit, and when he came back here, never again did he return to the other side, nor did he want to.

“Manuel believed that the best thing for a man was to work his own land, and he was right. I think the reason why this country is so behind is because all of its men have abandoned their fields to go work on the other side—and for what? Because, really, it's a miserable wage what they are paid, and you tell me if that isn't true, but what is one to do? In the past it used to be easier to earn a living. When you were kids, we had cornfields and peach orchards, but ever since they passed that free-trade agreement with the north, they've made it more difficult for us. It used to be that if you went to the mercado, anything local was always more affordable, but now the produce they bring from the other side is cheaper, and how are we supposed to compete with that? Everyone has abandoned their fields, and no one bothers with saving their seeds anymore. Only God knows where we will end up.

“I remember the day that bus pulled out of town, I turned to Lupe and said, ‘When will we ever see those kids again?' But here we are, right?” She smiles at me. “That's good that you've come back to see us, that you're going back to La Peña to spend time with your father, because whether we like it or not, in this life we only have the one. Your father went and did what he did with Manuel, and for that I can't say I wish him any harm, but I can't say I wish him any good either. Each one of us will have to settle our debts with God. Only He knows why your father is still here.”

“What are you guys looking at?” my mother asks, coming from the room where the animal's remains are kept.

“It's the entrance to La Peña,” Tito says. “I was just telling Chuyita how she used to call it La Paña.” She walks away, goes strolling along the wall, looking at the other photos. My mother comes over and has a look.

“Ah, cierto,” she says, leaning in. I stare at her profile and feel as though I'm seeing her for the first time.
Why are you like this? Why are you so distant? Why can't you just talk to me? Why, why, why
— She must have known why all along. Only once had she tried talking to me about when they had left us in Mexico. I had already graduated from college, was living in Chicago, and she and Jorge had driven into the city to run errands. Then, on their way home, a blizzard had paralyzed traffic on the expressway. When they called from my mother's cell, they happened to be near the exit that led straight to my apartment. They came over and ended up spending the night. Jorge stayed on the sofa and my mother and I shared my bed.