Hot Sur (34 page)

“Make sure the door is locked,” she said, and I realized that she could speak normally whenever she wanted.

I washed the giraffe in the sink with the liquid soap and afterward tried to mask the lingering smell with the hand lotion and cologne offered there for the passengers in small bottles ordered neatly on the counter. I really liked those little bottles and the only reason I didn’t take one was because I was afraid that they’d detain me for being a thief in America. I read the sign in the mirror that said, “Out of courtesy for your fellow passengers, please leave the bathroom in the same condition you found it,” and I found that very civilized and very American. After wringing out the giraffe as best I could “out of courtesy for my fellow passengers” I wiped and dried the whole bathroom until it was in “the same condition I found it” or even cleaner. The nena seemed calm at last, sheltered in a corner as if inside a cave, pressed up one against the other without protesting, her skin not repulsed at the contact with mine. That’s where I began to understand that Violeta was threatened by large spaces, and that on the contrary, her personality softened when she was in small spaces where she could feel protected by the four walls.

We returned to our seats and they brought us the meal on individual platters. I was astonished at how well everything was organized. It was incredible to see each item in a separate plate covered in aluminum foil, the plastic cup in one corner and in the other the dinnerware and napkin in its plastic bag. The best part was going to be the hamburger inside, with French fries and milk, because this would be our first true American meal. What a disappointment when I saw it was just chicken with vegetables, salad, and flavored gelatin, exactly the same thing I was served almost every day in Las Lomitas. But nothing was going to dampen my enthusiasm, and I consoled myself with thinking that if it was an American chicken it must be an amazing chicken.

That was the first time I was served a meal on a platter; the last time was in solitary confinement. Sometimes someone or something reappears out of nowhere and makes you feel as if a circle has been closed, that something that began a while ago has come to an end, that some
maktub
is being fulfilled, as my friend Samir would say. Even if it’s something as silly as a plastic tray. They had me locked up in a cell where everything was gray, with no natural light. The walls, the metal door, the bunk bed, the cement floor, the stainless steel toilet, all gray, gray, gray, and lacking a sense of time because they had taken my watch, and not seeing anyone, not even myself because there were no mirrors. I couldn’t even see the face of the human being who opened the slot to slide in my food. The tray came in, the tray went out. Three times a day. They only gave me a plastic spoon, I guess so I wouldn’t think of cutting my wrists. Useless precautions. Later I’d learn that you can make a stabbing pick from a spoon, even a plastic one, it’s what the Latina inmates called
chuzo
or
manca
. Spoons, pencils, hairpins, and other innocuous objects of daily life, here they become weapons.

The tray came in and the tray went out, but I could not tell who was bringing it to me. At first I shouted my head off. “Is there someone there? My husband is a cop,” I yelled, “let me call my husband.” But no one answered. I started to think that maybe I had died and that death was that gray place where I didn’t know about anyone and no one knew about me. Day and night with the buzzing fluorescent light that I wanted to turn off to rest or at least to cleanse my eyes of the insistent gray, exchange it for a darkness of deep black. But no. If I closed my eyes, I saw the dirty pink light that filtered through my eyelids. If I opened them, there was the gray, gray all around. They always gave me exactly the same food three times a day, a Styrofoam cup of café con leche and a donut. I used to like donuts, now I hate them. Café con leche and donut, café con leche and donut. Until one morning there was an orange on the breakfast tray. An orange! I couldn’t believe it. It seemed like a miracle, as if suddenly light had entered my cell. That orange shone as if it were alive, I swear, Mr. Rose, and it let me know that I too was alive. Because of that orange I was able to remember what the color yellow was like, which I was forgetting. I thought, the sun is like this orange, and it shines out there. I can’t see it, and its light doesn’t shine on me or warm me, but that doesn’t mean that the sun is not still there, and any moment I’ll be out of here too, and I’m going to sit in the sun and rid myself of all the dampness and confinement. And never again will I eat a donut. In jail, where you don’t have much, every object that falls into your hands takes on religious qualities, of a medal or a scapular; a pencil or a comb can take on those qualities. You press it in your hands, create a bond with it, treat it as if it had a soul. That’s what happened with my orange. My mouth watered just looking at it, but if I ate it I’d lose it, and it was my only company in that hole. I kept it intact until it began to turn and then I ate it before it was too late. But I saved the rind, which emitted a pleasant smell for a while and then lost it. But I didn’t lose the color; I was able to save that little piece of yellow.

Later, there would be my first night outside of solitary confinement, in the section with the other inmates. They transferred me late at night, and I stood for a long while looking through the bars at the endless, well-lit hallway with cells on each side. It was pleasing to be able to look beyond the cell wall, a joy to the eyes to be able to see far and deep, a good thing to confirm that the world was bigger than a cell. A bit later I lay down and fell asleep immediately, dreaming of the hallway, which became a subway station, and the cells train cars that passed quickly by. I woke up with a good taste in my mouth. I thought, if I’m on the subway and this is one of the trains, does that mean it’s going to take off toward some other place?

The following day they allowed me to wash for the first time in who knows how long. It was a short shower but with hot water and soap. It may not have been Heno de Pravia, Bolivia’s favorite soap, but in the shower I thought of her, of them two, or I should say us three at that time. I thought about my mother’s round pretty body, and baby Violeta and her lizard’s body, and my dark-skinned slight body, almost inconsequential when compared to Bolivia’s. Maktub, I thought, maktub, better this way, much better that Violeta had been in Vermont, that she’d been spared the raid on the house, the screams, the persistence of their questions, and the blows they had given me and would have likely given her. Good thing she didn’t see how they brought some of her favorite things down from the roof terrace in black bags. In the end, it was good that Violeta had been away at school, seated in a garden, safe, where no one could reach her or harm her, making wicker baskets in her crafts class and learning what laughter is, and what tears are, and hugs, and any other expressions that others call emotion but that she has trouble with. When I speak to you about Samir I’m referring to the man in my neighborhood who sold baklava, halvah, mamoul, and other Arab sweets. The same one who tells me that he finds it odd that Westerners use toilet paper. Greg didn’t trust this Samir but I liked him because he was as sweet as the honey confections he made, because each time he passed by his store he called out to me,
Ai-Hawa
, you are my Ai-Hawa, the air that I breathe. Samir explained to me that in his language there is the word maktub, which means that everything has been decided and written, everything, everything from the beginning. That morning under the shower, the first time I’d been allowed to wash in Manninpox, I tried not to think about anything except the lovely days of my childhood, my first childhood, the one before Bolivia’s trip. Not to think about anything, let my body focus on the hot water. But I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering back to Samir and maktub. Maybe everything was maktub since then, from the time Bolivia said good-bye to us when we were children. Everything maktub since then. Everything that is now coming to being.

This chapter is written in a hurry, Mr. Rose, I’m sure you’ve noticed. It’s just that this will be the last chapter, and not because I have exhausted everything I have to tell, not at all, the three of us have just arrived in America, after all. The story of Bolivia, Violeta, and me, a drama that I titled
Little Women in Queens
, because when we first arrived they had made us read Alcott’s
Little Women
in school. Yes. I’m writing against the clock now, because today, Saturday, Socorro Arias de Salmon is coming to visit. And I will give her all of this to send to you. It is a desperate decision made at the last hour. It was only yesterday that they told me she had asked for permission to come, and they wanted to know if I’d accept her request. It’s going to be my first visit in Manninpox, and likely the last, at least for a while, so I came up with this idea, a bit suicidal, to send this manuscript with her. I know it’s like tossing a coin, all or nothing, either it gets to you or it is lost forever. And that will be the end of all of my efforts to see my story turned into a novel. I hope I did the right thing, Mr. Rose, and that Socorro can find out where you live. Who knows? Let’s cross our fingers. We did what we could. There aren’t many other options anyway. There’s a rumor that in other sections they’re already beginning with the security searches. And that they’re going cell by cell taking what they can. They say that this time they’re very picky and stricter than ever. Only one thing is certain: I’m not going to just wait till they take away my papers. Anything but that. Maktub there as well.

I have two hours from this moment on. And I have to decide what story I choose to tell you. How can I fill the rest of my life? I think the best thing would be to continue chronologically as if nothing were happening, as if I still had all the time in the world. That is, continue the story of our arrival in America and taking the first steps of our American Dream, and then just stop wherever, when time runs out.

So Violeta and I were having chicken and vegetables on the plane, or I should say I was having it all, her meal and my meal, because she hadn’t touched a thing. Meanwhile, Bolivia wasn’t doing well, I know because she later told me the story many times of how she had to deal with hell and high water on the day of our arrival. Some months before, let’s say eight months, she had realized something. Something that was self-evident and if she had not realized it, it was because she had not wanted to: with the little she earned, and the amount she sent to Colombia for her daughters, then rent and living expenses for herself, she was never going to put away enough money for our visas and plane tickets. That simple. But what was it that suddenly made her realize this? I don’t know. The thing was that one day she stopped deceiving herself with happy accounting tricks and settled on the truth, the hard fucking truth. She had been working like a slave for four years in New York without having saved enough and living on hope, pretending things were fine, letting the years pass, but then that truth struck her like a full-blown slap, she said. She sat in Alice’s little plaza in Central Park, the one where Alice is with her tea party companions, the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, and such. It was the place she had wanted to bring us on the day of our arrival, a very pretty place that I knew from photographs she had sent of her there. On the back she had written, “To my daughters, we will meet here again.” From the day I received it, I placed it in my wallet for safekeeping, where it should still be, although they took my wallet when I arrived here, but they’ll give it back some day, and the picture will still be there, a very young Bolivia with a red wool cap and scarf standing by the Cheshire Cat. But it was there in that same place that she realized she’d never make it, she could work another four years, and it would still not be enough. Meanwhile, time would continue to pass, her daughters would continue to grow older, and what had begun as a temporary separation would become permanent abandonment. The possibility was terrifying, abandoning her own daughters, and although she never told me this, I suspect that she was frightened less by the idea of abandoning us than by the thought she might get used to it. That is, seated there next to the cat, Bolivia must have known she was in a quandary: either she went back to Colombia or she abandoned us. And it hurts me to think that at least for a moment she must have thought of choosing the second option. But even if it happened like that, she corrected herself right away and began to look for a temporary solution. Like most Colombians, she knew how to dance, was genius at the salsa, mambo, and merengue. On Sunday afternoons she went with her friends, two Dominicans called Chelo and Hectorita, to the Copacabana, where someone would always pay for her entrance and maybe a couple of drinks. She had met some men there who were crazy about her. She was still pretty, my mother, although work life had tattooed her legs with varicose veins, caused her eyes to wrinkle with crow’s-feet, and made the skin on her hands red and peeling. But she was still alluring and full of life, and knew how to arrange it so she’d have what she needed to shine there at the Copacabana: Bolivia knew how to dance. Among those who attended that club on Sundays, there was a rich Venezuelan called Miguel who had become well known for a phrase he kept repeating: it’s not Miguelito, call me Mike. This Miguelito or Mike took an interest in Bolivia and was soon approaching her with what she called serious propositions, such as coming to live in Spanish Harlem. He had a nice place, this Miguelito who liked to be called Mike, I know because later on Violeta and I would also end up at his place. It was a spacious apartment with great light, wine-red wall-to-wall carpet, expensive furniture, and even a white grand piano that they had gotten in there somehow for who knows what because no one played. Mike was tall and always gasping for air because he wouldn’t stop smoking even though he had suffered from asthma since he was a child, a serious case that often had him on the verge of suffocating. He wore a wide-brimmed Panama hat, white shoes and pants, a palm-print shirt, and had an enormous belly.