Useful fools, p.18
Useful Fools, page 18
Oh God, she was going to pee in her pants.
An oily voice whispered. “Not a good place to be alone during a paro armado, no, mamita?”
Shark Eyes.
He began to pull her backward, to a stall where blue plastic flapped against the wood. He cursed gently as he dragged her, then more roughly when he stumbled. For an instant his hand fell from her mouth. Rosa tried to scream, but shut her mouth with a whimper when the knife cut against her throat.
“Shhh,” he whispered, turning her around so he could drill his yellow-green eyes into hers. “Shhh.”
Her blood throbbed through the artery beneath his knife. She stared at him, unable to speak.
His nostrils flared. He liked what he saw. Liked her terror and the way it turned her mind to gel.
“I know,” he said lightly. “Why don’t we go home?” His voice friendly. His arm around her shoulders and the knife against her neck. “To your little house up the road?” Everything he said was a question.
Feeling as if her knees might give way at any moment, Rosa let him guide her toward the street. No one would see them. The stalls were empty. The shacks were shut tight, curled in on themselves. Shark Eyes would walk her, unseen, to the shack, and then he would open the door—
Rosa stopped walking.
“No, no, no.” His lips brushed her ear. “Keep moving, mamita.” The knife pricked as he shoved her forward.
“No,” she whispered, locking her knees. No more bad things.
Shark Eyes cursed at her and tried to drag her forward. She managed the first high note of a scream before he slapped his hand across her mouth. Then he pulled the knife away and kicked her. She punched at him as he twisted her head in his hand. His fingers gouged her cheek. His palm smothered her cries. Rosa fought her way back toward the market.
Abruptly, he gave up trying to pull her into the street. The knife was at her neck again and Rosa felt a thin slice, almost like a paper cut. His nails scratched her scalp as he seized a fistful of hair.
She stopped fighting and stumbled backward, letting him drag her toward the stalls. Her eyes filled with tears of gratitude, as if he had showed her some unexpected kindness. No more bad things. Magda’s children were safe.
Shoving her between two stalls, Shark Eyes forced her down, flat on her back. His knife still at her throat, he kicked her legs apart and knelt between them.
In the silence of the market, Rosa heard her own heart. She heard him breathing through his mouth. Maybe he couldn’t breathe through that thin nose. His yellow eyes didn’t leave hers.
Ants seemed to be crawling through her hair, out of the dust and across her scalp. She wondered who was behind the yellow eyes, if it was a person at all, if it had a name. And if it was a person and had a name, if it could feel pity.
“Please,” she whispered.
He began to undo the metal button at the waist of Magda’s jeans.
“Please don’t.” Cold sweat beaded her chest.
Shark Eyes smiled as the button slid free. He grasped the tab at the top of the zipper.
Oh God oh God oh God. Rosa began to tremble. Not this. No, God, please, not this.
But there was no answer, only a soft zzzz as he pulled down her zipper. With one hand, he jerked the jeans and her underpants down around her knees. Rosa put her hands between her legs, trying to cover herself, but Shark Eyes slapped them away.
Then, still kneeling above her, he began to unzip his pants. Rosa shut her eyes.
Oh, Magda, why didn’t you just run? Why did you come back for me?
Her eyelids were clenched as tightly as her fists. She would keep his eyes out of her, if not the rest of him. It was all she could do, now.
There’s nothing else I can do, she thought.
Magda’s voice came, soft and unexpectedly peaceful. Ay, hija, she murmured. You can always do something.
“You shouldn’t have come back for me,” Rosa told her in a choked voice, feeling bitter. “You should have just left me there.”
“What did you say?”
“You shouldn’t have come back,” Rosa repeated.
Do something.
I’m too frightened!
Do something!
With a sharp gasp, as if she were emerging from a long time underwater, Rosa opened her eyes. His face was close to hers. He was watching her, squinting and wary.
She cleared her throat and swallowed without moving. Her eyes on his, she struggled to grasp the feeling inside her, the breath of clarity Magda had brought. Above them, a red banner waved.
“Why not, mamita? Why shouldn’t I have come back?” The knife stroked her neck. Up, down.
Rosa looked over his shoulder at the stall behind him. Another of the fliers was pasted there, with big words scrawled at the bottom. ¡Viva el paro armado!
“Viva el paro armado,” she whispered.
She turned her eyes to his again, but she didn’t see him at all. Instead she saw a boy. Soft brown eyes icing over with anger and a fledgling hatred. Rodolfo’s words, spoken that long-ago April morning, glittered like a knife in her memory. “You know what the Party does to rapists?”
Shark Eyes dropped his knife and slapped her.
“Why do you think I’m here?” she asked him.
“Shut up, whore!” But his eyes broke from hers and the trap sprang open in Rosa’s mind.
She knew all about fear. She had learned everything there was to know that day in the Cesip. Her fear had made them strong and helped them kill Magda. But now Shark Eyes was frightened, and his fear was making her strong, filling her mouth with a metallic taste. A taste of knives.
She heard her voice turn cold, the way Mamá’s sometimes did. “Do you think girls like me just walk into San Juan the day before a paro armado? Do you really think I live here? Look at me!”
“Shut up.” His voice was weakening.
“You have about three minutes before my comrades arrive,” she said. “So you can stay here and finish up”—she glared into his eyes, which were filling with confusion, a flounder flopping on a line, not a shark at all—“or you can get out of here now and not lose that filthy thing hanging between your legs.”
His lips stretched back from his teeth. Rosa froze as he picked up the knife again, but she forced herself to look into his eyes, to stare him down without moving, without touching him.
He stood and began to zip up his trousers, yellow eyes darting and furtive. Rosa looked at her watch. “Two minutes,” she said.
Shark Eyes turned and ran.
Two minutes, she thought, and began to shake. The taste in her mouth turned to acid. Two minutes.
He’s gone. He’s gone.
She rolled over onto her knees and vomited. Her pants were still down around her knees. She could feel cool air on her skin as she stood up, swaying and nauseous. He’s gone. And still she shivered, reaching down and trying to pull up her underpants and jeans. Her vomit lay before her, a yellowish splatter in the dust.
Maybe it’s true, she thought. Maybe they were coming. Suddenly she felt exultant. They were coming! Coming to castrate Shark Eyes and then kill him, because that’s what they did, she’d read it in the newspaper. You know what they do to rapists? That’s what they do to rapists.
Oh, yes, come! Give me the knife and I’ll do it myself!
A wave of hatred crashed into her then, so powerful, so dizzying, that she almost threw up again. She leaned her head down, pressing her forehead against the edge of the stall.
She wanted that knife.
Tears pouring down her face, she tried to straighten Magda’s jeans, which were all twisted, all tangled, but her hands were shaking too hard. She struggled then with the zipper, but her hands still shook too hard. She gave up and stumbled away from the stalls, away from the puddle of vomit. Finally she could breathe.
I’m okay, she thought. I’m okay. Trying to convince herself.
She ran clumsily. It was just a few blocks, but she was panting and drenched in sweat by the time she shoved open the door and stepped inside. She dragged the bed to block the door. Then her strength gave out and she sat down, her hands gripping each other in her lap. Blood, wet and warm, was drying on her neck.
Rosa heard the blanket rustle on the other bed. She looked up into Livia’s wide, black eyes.
“I’m okay,” Rosa whispered. “Really.” With a superhuman effort, she put her hand over the sticky cuts on her neck and stood up. Trying to breathe normally, she crossed to a washbasin on the table. She rinsed blood from her neck and face, wincing. One of his nails had left a scratch on her cheek.
She walked to Livia’s side. “I’m okay,” she whispered. “I . . . I saw a rat, and I fell trying to run away.” She forced a smile. “I hate rats, don’t you?”
Livia looked away, and Rosa sat tiredly on the bed. “Everything’s going to be okay,” she said. “Alonso will come back. And my father will get your papá out of jail. You’ll see. We’ll be okay.”
Livia pinched Rosa’s sleeve and began rubbing it between her fingertips. Rosa watched, wondering. “This was your mamá’s sweater.”
Almost imperceptibly, Livia nodded.
“I don’t think she’d mind that I borrowed it, do you?” Livia didn’t reply. “When I saw it in the drawer, I remembered how your mamá looked in it. It made me sad. But it felt right when I put it on. Like she was still here, taking care of us.”
And she is, Rosa thought. She is.
“Remember the time I spent the night at your house? Your mamá gave me a big T-shirt to wear and I slept in your bed with you.” Rosa pulled up the sweater from her waist. “Look. I found the same T-shirt last night. It’s small on me now.”
Livia cocked her head as Rosa spoke. Diana woke with a kittenish yawn.
“The next morning, Alonso got up to go to the comedor, you remember? You and I went with him. When we got back, we had breakfast together. Diana, you were just a tiny baby. Gustavo wasn’t even born yet.”
Glancing at Diana, Rosa smiled. Memories flowed like a quiet river. “While we ate, your mamá told us about when she was a little girl in the Sierra. She used to take the sheep up the mountainside. Her mother would give her a poncho and a little pouch of toasted corn. She’d stay out all day and all night. She had to watch the lambs to make sure the foxes wouldn’t get them. One night, there was a hailstorm and she nearly froze. But she stayed anyway, taking care of the sheep. When she got home, her mother gave her hot soup. She said it took three days before she felt warm again.”
Diana smiled. Livia’s fingertips went on rubbing Rosa’s sleeve.
Shark Eyes was gone. No more bad things. Please, oh please, Santa María, keep us safe.
“Padre Manuel came over, do you remember? He hadn’t been in Salvador very long, but he and your mamá were already friends. And then my father came to get me. Your mamá made coffee, and they all talked about Sonia, the little girl my father had taken to the hospital the day before. A little girl who got burned. She was going to be okay, my papá said. I’ll never forget—your mamá started to cry when he said that. Padre Manuel gave her his handkerchief, and she blew her nose and said she was being silly.”
The three girls sat in silence.
“I’m hungry,” Diana said.
Rosa laughed, and a glint of humor seemed to flicker across Livia’s passive face. “Okay, Diana. Let’s see about breakfast.”
There was a crate of oranges, and Rosa found a few eggs. She served them, fried, over some leftover rice. Diana ate her own breakfast and then pulled Livia’s plate across the table and ate hers. Livia swallowed a glass of orange juice.
They listened to the radio during breakfast. From some of the shantytowns, breathless reporters announced empty streets. Vacant markets and shuttered stores. The Army was patrolling the city. But Sendero had tossed a Molotov cocktail into a micro with the driver inside, and all the bus lines had shut down.
Rosa clicked off the radio.
After breakfast, she heated water and gave the children sponge baths. Shining like wet seals, Diana and Gustavo laughed and splashed, tossing drops of water onto the dirt floor. Livia lifted her arms so Rosa could peel off her T-shirt. She winced when the collar squeezed her bruised temple. Trembling, she held Rosa’s hand as she stepped into the washbasin.
Rosa ran a washcloth down those chopstick legs and began to speak of summers at the beach. Of burning sand and icy waves and fishing boats dragging their nets through the sea. She spoke softly as she rubbed water and suds over jutting bones and loose brown skin. After a while, Livia stopped trembling.
With the kids finally fed and clean and dressed, Rosa took a deep breath and inventoried the supplies. She felt like a military commander under siege.
They had a head of cauliflower and a half-dozen potatoes. The crate of oranges and enough rice and beans to last a week. They’d stay inside. They’d survive. Rosa soaked a pile of beans in water, and as the afternoon drifted toward evening, she lit the stove and began to boil them. Gustavo was playing with the toy car she had brought. Diana was watching Rosa peel a clove of garlic, slipping the smooth white kernel from the skin. Livia sat on the bed. For the past hour she’d been staring down at her feet, dangling from her spindly little legs.
Tomorrow would be better. Tonight they’d eat dinner, and then Rosa would tell them a story. They’d all sleep together in the big double bed. But they’d be safe tomorrow. The Army would take back the streets. She’d find a telephone. Papá would do something to make Livia start eating again. Mamá would know that Rosa was alive, that she’d only done what she had to do. Tomorrow, her promise to Livia would come true.
Everything would be okay tomorrow.
SIXTEEN
Her voice raised in a high-pitched, singsong wail, the old woman fell to her knees beside Don Fermín’s body. But before she could lay hands on him two other women, thick squat women in bulky skirts and ragged sweaters, grabbed her. They dragged her to a hut, where their voices joined hers in a screeching lament.
Something hot and wet had splashed Alonso’s cheek when Don Fermín’s head burst open. He wiped it off, staring at the glistening red smear on his hand.
The villagers had uttered a soft, collective moan when the gun fired. Now they bunched together silently, their eyes veiled and unseeing. Rubbing his bloody hand on his jeans, Alonso looked at Rodolfo. His eyes narrowed to slits, Rodolfo was staring down at Don Fermín.
Comrade Francisco shoved his pistol in its holster and turned to the prisoner. Grasping him by the hair, Francisco forced him to look at the corpse.
“You see the price of weakness,” Comrade Francisco said. “The Revolution will sweep away the forces of reaction in a river of blood.”
The wounded man’s eyes were bleak, dead pools.
“Are you a spy of the reaction? Answer yes or no!”
“No,” the man croaked. Comrade Francisco released him and his head flopped forward.
“Does no one have anything to say?” The Senderista commander sounded fed up. But no one spoke, not even Elena. She stared straight ahead, her face pinched and resolute.
Comrade Francisco shook his head in disappointment. “Then we execute him with justice,” he said.
The word he used, ajusticiar, rang a tinny little bell in Alonso’s mind. He was back in Comrade Felipe’s cell. “Do you know why the Party executed your mother?” Ajusticiar. Executed her with justice.
Alonso felt his skin prickle. Then, with a violent shudder, he left it. Floated right out of his body and rose above the clearing in front of the school.
Looking down, he saw everything. The square adobe building with the red flag waving before it. The prisoner, slumped between the two guerrillas. The semicircle of Senderistas, watching the proceedings with cold boredom. Comrade Francisco, as fierce and arrogant as a hawk. Facing them, the villagers, who stared at nothing while Rodolfo kept his eyes on his commander.
“Lay him down,” Comrade Francisco told his men.
Roughly, the two Senderistas lifted the injured man’s arms from their shoulders and threw him to the ground. As they stretched out his arms, two more guerrillas grasped his feet. One tugged on his shattered leg, ignoring his screams. He went on screaming as the four of them crouched and pinned him, spreadeagled in the dust.
Comrade Francisco barked an order. Two of his men strode from the clearing to an open field, where they each pried a small boulder from the ground. They returned slowly, their arms dragged down by the weight of the stones.
The wounded man looked up at them, his eyes darting in terror from one impassive face to the other. “Not with stones! Please, just use your gun! Not with stones,” he begged. Tears traced dark tracks through the dirt on his temples.
No one but Alonso seemed to hear him.
Comrade Francisco looked at the campesinos and pointed at Elena.
As she stepped forward, one of the Senderistas handed her his stone. She staggered slightly under its weight, her face expressionless as the man on the ground went on begging. “Not with stones, not with stones!” Then suddenly Elena was screaming. She lifted the boulder high and hurled it down onto him. It landed with a soft thud in the middle of his body and Elena turned away, stumbling back toward the villagers.
The man’s eyes were open. The boulder lay on his stomach and he was retching, retching and gasping. He was, Alonso saw, fully awake, fully aware of what was happening to him, what would continue happening to him until he was dead. Comrade Francisco shook his head, disappointed again.
He wants his breakfast, Alonso thought. It had been a long hike, dragging the prisoner along with them. Alonso floated off to the trails through the Huayhuash, to the mountains and the blue sky.
Francisco pointed again. He beckoned, bidding Alonso to approach.
The prisoner lay moaning softly, stretched on the ground between the four Senderistas.
Rodolfo shoved Alonso forward and Alonso watched as a boy he knew to be himself walked to the man’s side. Then he watched the boy accept a flat boulder from the second of the Senderistas.
“It will go faster at the head,” Comrade Francisco said.
