Laura is terrified she is going to say something she mustn’t. These two thugs have been quizzing her for half an hour. Thank God for Yoyo and Fifi hanging on her, whining. She makes a big deal of asking them what they want, of getting them to recite for the company, and trying to get sullen little Fifi to smile for the obnoxious fat man.
Finally—what a relief! There’s Vic crossing the lawn with Carla and Sandi on each hand. The two men turn and, almost reflexively, their hands travel to their holsters. Their gesture reminds her of a man fondling his genitals. It might be this vague sexuality behind the violence around her that has turned Laura off lovemaking all these months.
“Victor!” she calls out, and then in a quieter voice she cues the men as if she does not want them to embarrass themselves by not knowing who this important personage is. “Victor Hubbard, consul at the Embajada Americana. Excuse me, señores.” She comes down the patio and gives Vic a little peck on the cheek, whispering as she does, “I’ve told them he’s been playing tennis with you.” Vic gives her the slightest nod, all the while grinning as if his teeth were on review.
Effusively, Laura greets Carla and Sandi. “My darlings, my sweet Cuquitas, have you eaten?” They nod, watching her closely, and she sees with a twinge of pain that they are quickly picking up the national language of a police state: every word, every gesture, a possible mine field, watch what you say, look where you go.
With the men, Victor is jovial and back-patting, asking twice for their names, as if he means to pass on a compliment or a complaint. The men shift hams, nervous for the first time, Laura notes gleefully. “The doctor, we have come to ask him a few questions, but he seems to have disappeared.”
“Not at all,” Vic corrects them. “We were just playing tennis. He’ll be home any minute.” The men sit up, alert. Vic goes on to say that if there is some problem, perhaps he can straighten things out. After all, the doctor is a personal friend. Laura watches their reactions as Vic tells them news that is news to her. The doctor has been granted a fellowship at a hospital in the United States, and he, Victor, has just heard the family’s papers have received clearence from the head of Immigration. So, why would the good doctor get into any trouble.
So, Laura thinks. So the papers have cleared and we are leaving. Now everything she sees sharpens as if through the lens of loss—the orchids in their hanging straw baskets, the row of apothecary jars Carlos has found for her in old druggists’ throughout the countryside, the rich light shafts swarming with a golden pollen. She will miss this glorious light warming the inside of her skin and jeweling the trees, the grass, the lily pond beyond the hedge. She thinks of her ancestors, those fair-skinned Conquistadores arriving in this new world, not knowing that the gold they sought was this blazing light. And look at what they started, Laura thinks, looking up and seeing gold flash in the mouth of one of the guardias as it spreads open in a scared smile.
This morning when the fag at the corner sold them their loteríatickets, he said, “Watch yourselves, the flames of your santos burn just above your heads. The hand of God descends and some are lifted up, but some”—he looked from Pupo to Checo—“some are cast away.” Pupo took heed and crossed himself, but Checo twisted the fag’s arm behind his back and threatened to give his manhood the hand of God. It scares Pupo the meanness that comes out of Checo’s mouth, as if they weren’t both campesino cousins, ear-twisted to church on Sundays by mothers who raised them on faith and whatever grew in their little plot of dirt.
But the fag lotería guy was right. The day began to surprise them. First, Don Fabio calls them in. Special assignment: they are to report on this Garcia doctor’s comings and goings. Next thing Pupo knows Checo is driving the jeep right up to the Garcia house and doing this whole search number that is not following orders. Point is, though, that if something comes out of the search, their enterprise will be praised and they will be decorated and promoted. If nothing turns up and the family has connections, then back they go to the prison beat, cleaning interrogation rooms and watering down the cells the poor, scared bastards dirty with their loss of self-control.
From the minute they enter the house Pupo can tell by the way the old Haitian woman acts that this is a stronghold of something, call it arms, call it spirits, call it money. When the woman arrives, she is nervous and grasshoppery, smiling falsely, dropping names like a trail of crumbs to the powerful. Mostly, she mentions the red-haired gringo at the embassy. At first Pupo thinks she’s just bluffing and he’s already congratulating Checo and himself for uncovering something hot. But then, sure enough, the red-haired gringo appears before them, two more doll-girls in either hand.
“Who is your supervisor?” The gringo’s voice has an edge. When Checo informs him, the American throws back his head, “Oh, Fabio, of course!” Pupo sees Checo’s mouth stretch in a rubberband smile that seems as if it may snap. They have detained a lady from an important family. They have maybe barked up the wrong tree. All Pupo knows is Don Fabio is going to have a heyday on their already scarred backs.
“I’ll tell you what,” the American consul offers them. “Why don’t I just give old Fabio a call right now.” Pupo lifts his shoulders and ducks his head as if just the mention of his superior’s name could cause his head to roll. Checo nods, “A sus órdenes.”
The American calls from the phone in the hall where Pupo can hear him talking his marbles-in-his-mouth Spanish. There is a silence in which he must be waiting to be connected, but then his voice warms up. “Fabio, about this little misunderstanding. Tell you what, I’ll talk to Immigration myself, and I’ll have the doctor out of the country in forty-eight hours.” On the other end Don Fabio must have made a joke because the American breaks out in laughter, then calls Checo to the phone so his supervisor can speak with him. Pupo hears his comrade’s rare apologetic tone. “Sí, sí, como no, don Fabio, inmediatamente.”
Pupo sits among these strange white people, ashamed and cornered. Already he is feeling the whip coming down like judgment on his bared back. They are all strangely quiet, listening to Checo’s voice full of disclaimer, and when he falls silent, only to their own breathing as the hand of God draws closer. Whether it will pick up the saved or cast out the lost is unclear yet to Pupo, who picks up his empty glass and, for comfort, tinkles the ice.
While the men were saying their goodbyes at the door, Sandi stayed on the couch sitting on her hands. Fifi and Yoyo clustered around Mami, balling up her skirt with holding on, Fifi wailing every time the big fat guard bent down for a goodbye kiss from her. Carla, knowing better as the oldest, gave her hand to the men and curtsied the way they’d been taught to do for guests. Then, everyone came back to the living room, and Mami rolled her eyes at Tio Vic the way she did when she was on the phone with someone she didn’t want to talk to. Soon, she had everyone in motion: the girls were to go to their bed-rooms and make a stack of their best clothes and pick one toy they wanted to take on this trip to the United States. Nivea and Milagros and Mami would later pack it for them. Then, Mami disappeared with Tio Vic into her bedroom.
Sandi followed her sisters into their side-by-side bedrooms. They stood in a scared little huddle, feeling strangely careful with each other. Yoyo turned to her. “What are you taking?” Fifi had already decided on her baby doll and Carla was going through her private box of jewelry and mementos. Yoyo fondled her revolver.
It was strange how when held up to the absolute phrase—the one toy I really want—nothing quite filled the hole that was opening wide inside Sandi. Not the doll whose long hair you could roll and comb into hairdos, not the loom for making pot holders that Mami was so thankful for, not the glass dome that you turned over and pretty flakes fell on a little red house in the woods. Nothing would quite fill that need, even years after, not the pretty woman she would surprise herself by becoming, not the prizes for her schoolwork and scholarships to study now this and now that she couldn’t decide to stay with, not the men that held her close and almost convinced her when their mouths came down hard on her lips that this, this was what Sandi had been missing.
From the dark of the closet Carlos has heard tones, not content; known presences, not personalities. He wonders if this might be what he felt as a small child before the impressions and tones and presences were overlaid by memories, memories which are mostly others’ stories about his past. He is the youngest of his father’s thirty-five children, twenty-five legitimate, fifteen from his own mother, the second wife; he has no past of his own. It is not just a legacy, a future, you don’t get as the youngest. Primogeniture is also the clean slate of the oldest making the past out of nothing but faint whispers, presences, and tones. Those tenuous, tentative first life-impressions have scattered like reflections in a pond under the swirling hand of an older brother or sister saying, I remember the day you ate the rat poison, Carlos, or, I remember the day you fell down the stairs….
He has heard Laura in the living room speaking with two men, one of them with a ripply, tricky voice, the other with a coarser voice, a thicker laugh, a big man, no doubt. Fifi is there and Yoyo as well. The two other girls disappeared in a jabber of cousins earlier. Fifi whines periodically, and Yoyo has recited something for the men, he can tell from the singsong in her voice. Laura’s voice is tense and bright like a newly sharpened knife that every time she speaks cuts a little sliver from her self-control. Carlos thinks, She will break, she will break, San Judas, let her not break.
Then, in that suffocating darkness, having to go but not daring to pee in the chamber pot for fear the men might hear a drip in the walls—though God knows, he and Mundo soundproofed this room enough so that there is no ventilation at all—in that growing claustrophobia, he hears her say distinctly, “Victor!” Sure enough, momentarily the monotone, garbled voice of the American consul nears the living room. By now, of course, they all know his consulship is only a front—Vic is, in fact, a CIA agent whose orders changed midstream from organize the underground and get that SOB out to hold your horses, let’s take a second look around to see what’s best for us.
When he hears the bedroom door open, Carlos puts his ear up against the front panel. Steps go into the bathroom, the shower is turned on, and then the fan to block out any noise of talk. The immediate effect is that fresh air begins to circulate in the tiny compartment. The closet door opens, and then Carlos hears her breathing close by on the other side of the wall.
II
I’m the one who doesn’t remember anything from that last day on the Island because I’m the youngest and so the other three are always telling me what happened that last day. They say I almost got Papi killed on account of I was so mean to one of the secret police who came looking for him. Some weirdo who was going to sit me on his hard-on and pretend we were playing Ride the Cock Horse to Banbury Cross. But then whenever we start talking last-day-on-the-Island memories, and someone says, “Fifi, you almost got Papi killed for being so rude to that gestapo guy,” Yoyo starts in on how it was she who almost got Papi killed when she told that story about the gun years before our last day on the Island. Like we’re all competing, right? for the most haunted past.
I can tell you one thing I do remember from right before we left. There was this old lady, Chucha, who had worked in Mami’s family forever and who had this face like someone had wrung it out after washing it to try to get some of the black out. I mean, Chucha was super wrinkled and Haitian blue-black, not Dominican café-con-leche black. She was real Haitian too and that’s why she couldn’t say certain words like the word for parsley or anyone’s name that had a / in it, which meant the family was like camp, everyone with nicknames Chucha could pronounce. She was always in a bad mood—not exactly a bad mood, but you couldn’t get her to crack a smile or cry or anything. It was like all her emotions were spent, on account of everything she went through in her young years. Way back before Mami was even born, Chucha had just appeared at my grandfather’s doorstep one night, begging to be taken in. Turns out it was the night of the massacre when Trujillo had decreed that all black Haitians on our side of the island would be executed by dawn.
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