When I Knew You (11 page)

Antonia sighed deeply and closed her eyes. "The lady. She... tells me things. She always has."

I was startled. "I don't remember you ever talking about a Lady..."

"I did, I think, at first. Maybe not. But I had to stop talking about her." She pulled out a yellow piece of notepaper from her pants pocket along with a cassette tape. She handed me the paper and tucked the tape back in. "It's right here."

I unfolded the note. The handwriting was Antonia's simple script, careful and neat.

Antonia,

Do not take the white pill – not in the morning or at night. Hide it and pretend you did. Then throw it away in the toilet.

Listen to the Lady, but do not tell anyone about her. No one.

Listen to the tape. That way you can remember all the important things.

Always take care of Kati. Always.

From Antonia

"I don't understand. This is a note from..."

"From me. It was something Margie suggested, to keep me from forgetting things that were important. I have a tape and I play it every morning, make new ones every now and then when things change."
 

She held out her hand and I gave her the note back.
 

"The Lady is... she's in here." She tapped her head. "She has been talking to me for a while. Right after the accident, I think. Margie said I got excited about her one day and I told Mother, your Abuela. That was a mistake because I guess she thought I was..."

"Crazy?"

She nodded. "That's what the white pills are for. To silence her. To make the Lady go away. But they made me... I don't know the word. Blank. Like a blank piece of paper every day. I couldn't think at all, I couldn't do anything. I had to start again with the pennies."

"I remember the pennies."

Antonia looked grim. "I don't remember, of course. It was too long ago. But I tell the story... I mean, it's on the tape, I listened to it today, so I know. But I don't remember. Anyway, I stopped taking the pills for a month when they were running some tests—I think it was seven years ago. That's in my tape. The Lady came back, and right about then Margie started helping more. We worked on making tapes and notes so I could be more ..." She knitted her brows in concentration. "On my own."

"Independent, " I offered.

"Right. Independent." She said the word slowly as if savoring it. "The note and the tape, they helped. I can do more, remember for a little longer. As long as I don't take the pills and don't talk about the Lady, I can do more." She folded the note and put it back in her pocket. "I never talked about the Lady out loud. I didn't want to tell you. I didn't want you to get scared."
 

"Did you think I'd tell Abuela?"
 

"No, not really. At least, I don't think so." She shrugged. "It was just a bad idea, you were a child, then you were busy." She paused, then continued. "The Lady told me about that man, the tall man and that he would lie and try to hurt you. She said I needed to keep you safe."

We lay there in silence for a minute.
Voices. She's hearing voices.
 

"Mom. Who do you think is the Lady?"

"I don't know. I thought she might be a special angel. A guard... guard... guardian angel. But I'm not sure. Maybe..." She raised her hand to her lips as if to stop her thoughts from becoming audible.

I reached over and pulled her hand away from her lips gently. "Maybe what?" Maybe she knows she's... not well.

"Maybe she's the other Antonia," she said quietly.

In my mind, I saw the fierce intelligence of my mother from before, the other Antonia, a force so great that I couldn't understand where she had gone, or how she had disappeared from my life and left behind so little...
 

The thoughts stung, because I knew Antonia, this Antonia loved me. But most of the time it hadn't seemed to be anywhere near enough. Most of the time I was watching out for her, feeling like I was more the parent than she was—until she pulled me out through those French doors.

Antonia turned away and started for the camper's hatch. "We should go before they start looking around here."

I followed her out, wondering where it was we should go.

Chapter 14

This is insane.
 

That's all I could think as we drove towards downtown El Paso. The modest skyscrapers squatted humbly at the foot of the mountains, tucked in the pass between the Mexican range and the US range of the Franklins.
 

I had showed Antonia the envelope and the tape, and told her about the lawyer who came to the ropes course to tell me she was "back." And now I was driving us to his office based on a business card, hoping he was still there and could help us figure out what was going on.
 

I was going there blind, not knowing what side Calderon was on. At this point, I didn't even know what the sides were. I was going there with a woman, my mother, who could only retain a week's worth of information, who was talking to "the Lady." Then there was the goofy-guy-turned-psychopath who had probably tried to kill me. Eliah was somewhere out there looking for me. For us.
 

And there was the old man that had come to the hospital. Abuela had warned Pilar about him.
 

This whole thing was a bad idea. We should go to the police, run across the International Bridge to Mexico, head back home. This couldn't be happening.
 

My body argued back. My side was scraped from scrambling in and out of the back of the truck, my bruises on my ribs from the accident were still tender. The little toy climbers swayed from the rearview mirror and I thought of Pilar, and the blanket that lay flat where her leg should have been.

"Is this the tape?" Antonia held the cassette in her hand, reading the label on the side. "Is it the one ... I made for you?"

I nodded, suddenly not wanting her to hear it—to hear how the "other Antonia" had referred to her.
 

"It got erased. I think it was Eliah." I remember Eliah standing by the bookshelf after he delivered my medicine. After he left, I'd heard the click of the machine. He must have erased it when I went to the bathroom to ditch the pills.

"Both sides?" Antonia asked.

"What? What do you mean?"

"Are both sides erased? You know, if you flip it over?"

"There's another side?" I was lost. I never even played a cassette tape before a week ago. I assumed cassettes were like the old camcorder tapes Abuela would play sometimes.

She reached into her overnight bag and pulled out a cassette player. "Let's listen and see."

I felt a sudden wave of panic.
She seems nothing like me
, I remembered the other Antonia saying on the tape
. She seems... like an idiot. A sweet, dim, idiot.

 
"No!" I reached out and tried to get the tape. "Not yet, okay? Not right now."

She pulled away, palming the tape deftly. "Kati, we need to know if she, um.. I... well, you know, if she had more to tell you about this."

"It's just... I mean, I ... I don't think I'm ready."

She stared at me incredulously. "Do you think we have time for you to get ready?"

"Not now." I tightened my grip on the steering wheel until I could see my knuckles turning white. What else would Antonia say? "Not now, Mom."

We drove past the airport exit in silence, then made our way past another mall. Soon we'd be under the soaring maze of overpasses that fed traffic toward the International Bridge to the south or the Fort Bliss Army base to the north.
 

"Kati," she said gently. "It is still me on the tape, you know. She is still me."

I concentrated on driving, having no answer.

I pulled into the parking garage at Calderon's office. Antonia had no memory of sending him to get me, but something about the way he spoke about her, about the other Antonia, made me think he was a friend.
 

Calderon's office was on the third floor of the Mills building. I caught a glimpse of myself in the elevator's mirrored wall panel. The bruises from my accident were fading to a yellow-green on my face, my hair was a mess, my clothes were dusty with chalk and rumpled from the drive.
 

"You look fine, Kati," Antonia said.

"I look like hell."

"Well, sure, you look like hell. You've been through hell. After this we'll go to a friend's house and get cleaned up," she said.
 

"Who's house? Where can we go? Where is it safe?" I asked. Before she could answer the elevator doors slid open and we froze in place.

The front lobby looked like it had been hit by a hurricane. Tables were overturned, paper was strewn everywhere, and the glass wall behind the huge reception desk was cracked down the middle. A toppled office chair poked out from behind the desk, its back section twisted. Yellow police tape was draped across the reception desk and continued to the far wall, blocking the way to the hallway on the left.

The elevator doors began to close on the elevator and I jumped forward in time for them to spring back into the wall. We stepped cautiously onto the marble floor, trying to avoid the swirl of paper at our feet. The office looked empty, but I could hear voices.

"What are you doing here?" A woman emerged from the hallway, her dark hair pulled into a messy ponytail. She wore a jacket over jeans and walked swiftly in bright white tennis shoes to intercept us, her short stride as authoritative as her voice.

"I was looking for Mr. Calderon," I said. "He came to see me a while ago and we never finished our..." I wasn't sure what to say.
 

"Mr. Calderon, you say?" Her eyes pinned me in place. "Gustav?"

Antonia's grip on my arm tightened. "Gustav has some papers of mine."
 

Antonia's voice was soft, her southern accent thick. Her accent was always heavier when she was stressed. "We need them."

"I'm afraid the office is closed for now." The woman reached over the tape to the receptionist desk and withdrew an ivory business card with embossed lettering. "Call us in a week, I'm sure we'll be able to help you."

I accepted the card. "Thank you. And you are?"

"Connie. I'm the office manager." She smiled weakly.

I peered over her shoulder, saw the stray sheets of paper that littered the halls, looking like autumn leaves scattered in a brisk wind. "What a mess," I said.

"All those neat little files," Antonia shook her head. "All that work."

"We'll be able to put it all back," she said reassuringly.
 

"Can we reach Mr. Calderon?" I pressed. "He has something for us, it might not even be here."

The voices rose for a moment and there was a loud slam. The woman looked down the hall. She turned to us, her face grim. "Gustav is missing. He's been missing for three days. I'm very sorry, but I'm certain he'll be back. He was on a trip out of town, then when he returned, he called and said he had some personal business to attend to."
 

"Three days?" I asked. That was about the time I left the hospital.

Connie pulled her jacket closed. "I haven't heard from him. He always calls me. He's always worried about me..." her eyes blinked quickly and she stammered. "I-I-I mean the office. He's always worried about the office." She covered her mouth with her hand, her face crumbling in a flash before she regained her composure. "Ah, hell. I don't know where he is. I'm sorry." She led us back to the elevator. "Call in a week. We'll have this mess straightened out and will find whatever it was he had for you."

I stopped, placed my hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure he's fine. Let him know Katarina and Antonia Perez stopped by."

Color drained from Connie's face and her mouth dropped open. She recovered quickly. "You need to leave." Her voice was hushed and urgent.
 

She grabbed us by the arms and pushed us toward the elevator. "Look, you need to leave now." At the lobby, she reached over the reception desk, grabbing a pen and another business card. She scribbled on the back of it quickly, then hit the elevator door. A voice called out from down the hall. "Call me at this number in two hours." She shoved the card in my hand as the elevator rang and doors slid open. "I'm coming!" she shouted over her shoulder. "Go!" she hissed at us.

I hit the button for the first floor and watched her as the doors slide closed. Her face composed into a mask of control, but her eyes were still a little wide, her face a little pale. I hoped no one else would notice.
 

We sat at the aged Formica tables and benches in the middle of a bustling Chico's Tacos. It was my favorite fast food, but this time I barely tasted the flautas. Antonia smiled at everyone who glanced her way, acting as if she knew them but couldn't quite place them. It struck me that it was probably true for her most of the time.

"We should listen to the other side of the tape," she said, dipping her flautas in the red sauce and taking a bite.

"Okay." I had hoped she'd have forgotten by now, but her memory wasn't
that
short. It also didn't have neat borders like a seaside cliff wall. It was more like the Rio Grande, meandering along the border, sometimes slipping over lines drawn only on maps. Some days she'd remember details for a week, even two, then the next morning those thin streams of memory would have disappeared without a trace.

I had hoped I could slip off at some point and listen to the tape, listen to the other Antonia—mom—without her hearing it, or more to the point, without her hearing herself. I didn't know what that would do to her mental state to hear "the lady" somewhere other than her head. Obviously, the lady in her head was the "other" Antonia, but she was not a very nice lady. But we didn't have the luxury of tiptoeing around it.

We still had another hour before we could call back Connie from the law office, so we got in the truck and headed towards Trans Mountain Road. Cut into the Franklin Mountains, the road was long and winding and you could see into the desert for miles. The mountains were my rugged cactus covered brothers, they surrounded my horizons my entire young life. I'd never seen a sunset or sunrise without them until I was in high school, traveling out of town for the first time with friends.