Perla (23 page)

“Why not?”

“I don’t have the words.”

“Start anywhere.”

“That’s not the problem.” I imagined his face as he listened to a story of a drenched and dripping figure in my living room, a man who was not a man, who broke in without breaking anything, really just appeared, who smelled terrible and shed constant water and had memories that proved he had been alive and also when and in what circumstance, if there could be such a thing as proof in this mad story of a not-man who eats water, whom I could not stop thinking about, who had drowned my life and all the things of which I thought my life was made. “I just can’t.”

Very gently, he said, “Try me.”

“I will, one day. I promise.” And I meant it. It occurred to me that if there were any person in this world who had a chance of taking in this story, of holding it close to the body with both hands, it would be he.

“As long as you’re all right,” he said, and placed his hand over mine.

I stared at his hand. Hard as it was to believe, he seemed sincere. He was not thinking of himself, or at least not of the anger or the slights or even the uncertainty of days to come. I couldn’t understand why he cared so much, when even I could stand myself only because I had no choice, because I was trapped inside my skin and could not
peel it off and run away. Here was the hand that had reached inside me and found what I truly was, a feat my friends could not accomplish since my veneer was so convincing, a feat my mother seemed to avoid with a resistance that bordered on distaste, a feat my father had perhaps attempted but failed in—why?—perhaps for fear of things that lurked inside our bond. That Gabriel should have reached and felt—and that his hand should still return to me, still arrive on mine, like this, warm, supple, with no trace of disgust. That such a thing could be.

“Gabriel.”

“Yes.”

“I wish we could begin again.”

I leaned in to his body. The air seemed to rush and form a shroud around us, dense and humming. His body told me with its bright electric language that desire was still there, that the gap between us could be easily dissolved, was already dissolving, and I turned my mouth in to his neck and closed the circle. He allowed me in, enveloped me, his hands were in my hair, under my shirt, my shirt was gone, his mouth returned to mine, my breasts returned to him, all the flesh that wanted to come home, he tried to talk but I said
Shhh, shhhhh querido, don’t say anything
, and even here he acquiesced, even this he gave me, sounds free of the cage of language, bodies free of words, he let me strip him, let me take him as a canvas for my deepest colors. I wanted to exalt him with the shout of my bare hands. His tongue spoke to my neck, his hands spoke to my skin, his sex spoke inside me with a force that could surely defy gravity, keep a human from falling, shoot a body to the stars and spill its secrets into black and endless space.

Afterward, I lay curled on him, wrapped in afternoon light and carnal smells and the noise of traffic through an open window, through which our sounds had surely reached the street.

“Perlita.”

“Mmmm …”

“What are we doing?”

“Basking.”

“Yes. But where do we go from here?”

“Wherever you want.”

“Are you coming back to me?”

“Would you let me?”

“Conceivably.”

“Conceivably? That doesn’t sound so good.”

“I’d have to hear your plea.”

“I don’t have one planned.”

“No matter. Spontaneous is best.” He took my hand and raised it to his lips. “Stay for a while. I’ll cook something, we’ll eat without putting on our clothes.”

I wanted to stay. I almost said yes, almost let myself sing into the notion, but then I thought of the guest, thirsty for his water, swimming in his memories, needing me, waiting, wondering when I would arrive.

“I can’t.” I pulled myself up. “I have to go.”

He stared at me, wounded.

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t take much more of this, Perla.”

“Don’t give up on me,” I said, for the second time this week.

“You’re the one who’s leaving.” He searched my face. “Again.”

“It’s different this time. I just need to take care of something.”

“But you won’t tell me what.”

“Not yet. I’ll call you soon and I’ll explain.” I stroked his chest, slowly, lingering among the wiry curls. “I promise. I’ll call you very soon.”

When I left, he was still on the floor, watching me with bewildered eyes.

10
Open

I
don’t have much time left to tell this story, judging from the pain that just rushed through me—the most incredible sensation, like being gripped in the fervent fist of God.

As I said before and cannot say enough times, this is my way of speaking to the heart of things, curving around it, in the thrall of its gravitational pull. And now we’re almost there, almost at the core.

Let me tell you about the night that cut me open.

I had gone to Uruguay with Gabriel. It was ten days before the wet man arrived. First, we went to Gabriel’s family cottage on the beach, after which we planned to spend some days in Montevideo with his parents. For a long time I had attempted to put off meeting his parents, as I knew that they had not been pleased to learn their son was dating a girl with a family like mine. But Gabriel had been talking for years about the little house in Piriápolis, on the very beach where his parents had first met, where we could relax together in a place of calm and beauty. And your parents won’t mind that you’re staying overnight with someone you’re not married to? He smiled at that. Oh Perla, he said, they’re not that kind of parents. You’ll like them, really, and they’ll like you, they’ve had plenty of time to get used to the idea of, well, of you, and once they meet you they’ll see who you are instead of just where you come from.

I finally relented. The idea appealed to my hunger for adventure, and in any case, the summer was ripe, the millennium fresh and young and spreading itself before us like a dare. Even the lie to my parents
wasn’t hard; my friend Marisol was more than glad to provide an alibi, and even Mamá, who thought I had a new romantic interest in the form of Bruno, a physics student whose father was a doctor—when my imagination faltered all my invented dates were sons of doctors—accepted the story without question.

During the whole ferry ride across the wide Río de la Plata, as I watched the water rush below us, smooth and thick and silty, I thought of my parents, back at home, believing the lie. I had never crossed a border without them. I was drunk on the liquor of transgression, its hot thrill of guilt and power, the promise of standing at the helm of my own life. We landed in Montevideo and immediately boarded a bus to Piriápolis. The bus ride took us out of the city to the countryside, with its gentle hillocks and copious green. I leaned in to Gabriel as if to sleep, but could not relinquish wakefulness. The road was too open, my lust too large, the pop songs on the driver’s radio too buoyant. Mine, I thought, this road is mine, I am a grown woman on the road with my lover and all of this—these moments, this body, the rattle of the bus—all of it is mine. I could almost sink into the delicious illusion of being free, able to become any woman I wanted. I lay in Gabriel’s arms and watched Uruguayan fields ebb past, tranquil, lush, beckoning.

We arrived at the cottage and immediately began having sex on the living room floor, the kitchen counter, and finally the bed. The freedom of an entire night together, with no subway ride home, made me delirious with lust, I couldn’t stop. Dusk fell and wrapped us in hot summer darkness. I growled and screamed without concern for neighbors. At one point, Gabriel laughed at my ferocity, which made me laugh, and then neither of us could stop.

“What are you laughing at?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

“Me neither.”

“Ay, Perla,” he said, still laughing. I took that opportunity to kiss his chest, stomach, the bliss of his hip bone, my hand already on his sex.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Wait. Maybe we should go to the beach.”

“Why?”

“It’s beautiful at night. You’ll love it.”

“Not yet. I’m not done with you.”

“We can come right back.”

“I don’t want to wash you off me.”

“Who says you have to?”

“I’m not going to the beach smelling like this.”

“You smell delicious.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Want me to prove it?”

Before I could answer he sprang up, wrestled me onto my back, and pinned my arms above my head in a single gesture.

“I surrender,” I called out.

And I did.

We lost track of time. The night held us in its velvet folds.

“Now I can’t let you outside.”

“Why not?”

“You smell so good that all the men will want you.”

“Gabriel.”

“They won’t even know what hit them but what hit them is the sex and come and musky sweat all over you.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I’ll have to beat them off with driftwood.”

“Oh come on.”

“Is that an order?”

I laughed.

“Well, in that case—”

“Gabo—”

It was two in the morning when we finally went outside. The Río de la Plata glimmered under a broken moon. The waves announced themselves over and over,
shhh, shhh, shhhhhhh
. Lovers and families
strolled the shore in little clusters, murmuring, laughing, drinking
mate
. I saw several clusters of young Uruguayan hippies, with their uncombed hair and marijuana smiles and baskets of fresh-baked goods and trinkets they sold on the beach to fund their continued wanderings. They were my age, or younger; they seemed full of ease, too relaxed to care about their hair or future. I had never been like them, never had a friend like them, could not imagine their inner worlds. While in the past I might have mocked their clothes or lazy stances, tonight I felt a stab of envy. They seemed free. All the denizens of this little beach town seemed free. It could have been the lovemaking, still making me feel as though my bones were made of nectar, or perhaps the long day of travel, but I had the strange sensation of having entered an alternative plane, an enchanted realm of sex and calm and possibility. My family had often vacationed in Uruguay over the years, but only in Punta del Este, with its crowds of expensive bikinis and high-rises crushed up against each other. In Punta del Este, even the ocean seemed carefully groomed. Here the waves were just themselves, loose-maned, unabashed, mixing easily with the sand.

We walked. I walked arm in arm with Gabriel, cradling my weight against his body. We took off our shoes and walked toward the waves and when the water swallowed our feet like dark wet silk, I laughed.

“It’s wonderful here,” I said.

“I thought you’d like it.”

“We should come back.”

“We’ll bring our children.”

I laughed again.

“What’s so funny?”

“What children?”

“You can’t imagine it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

He splashed me with his foot. “Then what are you saying?”

He said it lightly, but I heard the edge in his voice. We had never talked about children before, not directly, though I had often
wondered—late at night, naked, drifting in and out of sleep beside Gabriel—how a little boy or girl sprung from the two of us might look, how he or she might run or shout or laugh in a home we all shared, somewhere in the city, always in the city, an apartment where the child would fall asleep each night to lullabies shot through with the constant murmur of Buenos Aires. Surely that was what I wanted for my future, even if it meant long-avoided meetings, a double life exposed, a war with my parents that could end in my being cut from them like an amputated limb. I could have a life that contained Gabriel or a life that contained my parents, but I could not imagine having both. And so the thoughts of children, like all thoughts of the further future, stayed caught in the dim borderland between sleep and consciousness, never spoken. “Nothing.”

“You don’t want to have kids with me.” He sounded genuinely hurt.

“That’s not true.”

“It’s because of your parents, isn’t it?”

I was quiet for a few steps. A low wave stroked our feet and then retreated.

“When are you going to live your own life?”

“I am living it.”

“But in their shadow.”

“Are you calling me a coward?”

“Do you feel like a coward?”

The waves, the waves, they were at my ankles, foaming and awake. “Sometimes.”

“Let me meet them.”

“No.”

“You’re about to meet my parents, but I can’t meet yours.”

“If you met them you couldn’t stand them.”

“Can you?”

I almost let it roll past me, it was such a beautiful night, but he had stopped walking and examined me with a gravity that bordered on a challenge. “Please. Try to understand. They’re my parents.”

His gaze softened and turned tender. “Maybe they’re not.”

“What?”

“Maybe they stole you.”

I said nothing. I couldn’t move.

“It’s been on my mind,” he said. “I’ve been turning it over. Haven’t you ever wondered?”

“No,” I said, and it was true. I hadn’t. Or, more accurately, I had, but the wondering barely left an imprint on my conscious memory, it had been as rapid as a blink, shut-open-shut, fading into oblivion every time.

“Why not?”

“Why would I?”

“Well,” he said, and I could have slaughtered him for the pedantic tone, “most of the abducted children were taken in by members of the regime. And from what you’ve told me about your father—”

“Shut up. I haven’t told you anything about him.”

Very gently, he said, “That’s exactly my point.”

I didn’t answer.

“You could find out, you know, at Las Abuelas’ office.”

I didn’t know what to say. I listened to the hostile whisper of the waves. Las Abuelas—the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo—were a group within the Madres who wore the same white headscarves but who searched not only for their disappeared children but for their grandchildren as well. Fighting, they claimed, for the return of stolen babies. Who now, in 2001, were not babies anymore, but young adults with their own lives and destinies.