Useful fools, p.7
Useful Fools, page 7
Alonso glanced at the kids. They were busy eating, looking down at Salvador and marveling at how small the shacks looked from up here. He turned sideways and lifted his sweatshirt. Rodolfo gave a soft whistle and gently pulled the shirt back down.
“He really laid into you.”
“He was drunk.” Alonso felt suddenly defensive. “He isn’t really like that. It’s just . . .” Remembering the sound of his father crying, his voice trailed off. “It’s just because he was drunk.”
“You tellin’ me?” Rodolfo sidearmed a stone down the hill-side. “You remember my old man?”
Alonso nodded.
“There’s no excuse for it,” Rodolfo spat. “Gettin’ so drunk you beat up your own kids.”
“My old man’s not like yours,” Alonso snapped. “Quit preaching. You sound like Padre Manuel.”
Rodolfo faced him, his thin cheeks an angry red. “Forget Padre Manuel! He’s gone, no? I’m just saying there’s no excuse for what your old man did to you. Don’t get so soft-headed you forget that.”
Alonso shrugged, and Rodolfo called Livia over. “Don’t bring her into it,” Alonso protested.
Rodolfo ignored him, and before Alonso could stop him, he reached over and pulled the shirt up. Livia gave a little moan, but Rodolfo took her by the hands and pulled her so that she stood facing him.
“Livia, you know your brother’s hurt and you know how it happened.”
Livia nodded, biting her lip.
“Now don’t cry. This isn’t the time to be a crybaby. You need to be a warrior queen, okay?”
Livia nodded again, and Rodolfo smiled at her. Alonso could see hero worship rising in his sister’s pinched little face.
“Now listen,” Rodolfo commanded. “I’m gonna buy an ointment. I want you to put it on Alonso’s back every morning till he’s better. But you gotta get up early, ’cuz we don’t want Diana and Gustavo to see this, right? It would scare them too much.”
Livia stood a little straighter. She was being distinguished from the younger children. “They’d be scared,” she agreed.
“But not you,” Rodolfo said. “You can do this.”
“Yes, I can.”
Rodolfo smiled, and Livia beamed as she sat down beside him.
“Where are you getting the money to buy me stuff?” Alonso demanded.
“Oh, I’m a working man, now,” Rodolfo replied airily. “I work in a factory. We make blankets.”
“What about school?”
“There are more important things, Alonso.” Rodolfo lay back on the ground, squirming a little on the rocks and looking up at the high, gray sky. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, ’mano, but this is a good time to be alive.” He spoke with a conviction as simple as it was absolute.
Alonso snorted skeptically, but Rodolfo said no more.
SIX
A white-jacketed waiter slipped through the crowd, and Rosa snatched a tiny empanada from his tray. He swirled away, hands grabbing at him, and Rosa watched as the tray emptied and the waiter disappeared into the kitchen.
She wore black. So did her parents. They were still in mourning. But it was her grandmother’s seventieth birthday, and the Alcázar mansion was a jumble of laughter and color and smoke. Women in red and green and blue, in silk and satin, perched like tropical birds at the edges of chairs and sofas. Their men cast a smoky shadow around the bar, talking politics and laughing. In the kitchen blenders roared, crushing ice for pisco sours.
Rosa bit into her empanada. Powdered sugar and pastry and spicy meat filling. The tastes merged and suddenly it wasn’t just the empanada she was tasting but the bakery man she was seeing, pedaling his three-wheeled cart up the dusty hill into Salvador. Ay, Mamá, Alonso had said. Couldn’t we just get some empanadas off the cart? And Magda had arched her eyebrows and laughed. Given Alonso money for a bus ride and an empanada.
He hadn’t even looked at her at the funeral. But who could blame him? He hated her. He had the right. A month later and she still hadn’t seen him. Still hadn’t told him the truth.
She hadn’t told anyone. Not the cops nor her parents and certainly not her psychiatrist, Andrea, who sat so patiently every week, waiting to hear what had really happened inside the Cesip. Andrea didn’t need to know. But Alonso—
“Rosa!” An age-spotted claw gripped her wrist. “You didn’t say hello!”
Rosa blinked. “Hola, Tía.” She bent to kiss her great-aunt’s cheek.
“You’ve grown so tall and pretty.” Tía Virginia’s thumb caressed Rosa’s birthmark. “You’re nearly as beautiful as your mother.” She turned to Tía Cecilia. “Doesn’t Rosa look just lovely?”
Rosa forced a smile. Tía Virginia was always nice to her now. And to Mamá and Papá as well. No nasty gossip anymore, no talk of Salvador and all the cholos there. Tía Virginia had read about Magda in the newspaper. She knew what had happened inside the Cesip. Everyone did.
Or thought they did.
With a smile, Tía Virginia released Rosa and shifted her weight back toward Tía Cecilia. She had just lowered her voice—Of course he’s got money, Ceci, he’s a Jew—when the lights flickered and the whole room seemed to sigh in dismay. “Oh, no . . .” The lights came back on, but Rosa’s grandmother wasn’t fooled.
“Light that candle,” she ordered a waiter.
Just as the waiter flicked on a lighter, the house shuttered into darkness. In the kitchen, the blender fell silent.
A blackout.
Rosa stumbled, bumping over Tía Cecilia’s ankles. She nearly fell, righted herself. She felt her way to the wall and grabbed the edge of a bookshelf. Out on the street, gunfire popped. Warning shots from the cops at the bank on the corner.
Around Rosa, curses rippled. Damned Senderistas! The waiter went on lighting candles, and a mirror-crusted crucifix became a mosaic of reflected flames.
Rosa clung to the bookshelf like a shipwreck victim clinging to a raft. Trying to stave off panic, to take deep breaths the way Andrea had taught her to. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe deep. But it was all coming back. That heartbeat like a galloping pony. That cold feeling in her hands, as though she’d plunged them into a bucket of ice water. Her legs hardening to pillars. It was all coming back, she was seeing it all again. . . .
They had waited by the lab. They had laughed at the fearful gringos and their Coca-Cola. Finally Magda had gone to look for Alonso, ay-ay-aying about how long he was taking. Rosa had stayed by the lab, so when the back door opened and the Senderistas stepped in, she saw them first. They pulled out pistols and she screamed.
Screamed, but then froze in panic. Like a little kid, lying stock-still in bed because if you don’t move the monsters won’t get you.
Magda had already reached the lobby. She was nearly out the front door. But when Rosa screamed, she wheeled and came running back. Rosa still couldn’t move. “Santa María,” Magda had said. And then, with a little shove, “Run to your papá, Rosa. Run!”
Rosa had screamed again, and stumbled. Magda had stepped toward her attackers, hands outstretched as if in welcome. And as the first gunshot thundered, Rosa had finally begun to run. The shot had echoed through the corridor. In its wake, Rosa had heard a soft sound. A little grunt that must have been Magda when that first bullet hit her.
Run, Rosa. Run to your papá.
Her cheeks were wet. If only she hadn’t seen them. If only she had gone, instead of Magda, to find Alonso. If only she had run. If only . . . If only, if only . . .
The candles flickered around the room, and a tall shadow edged through the crowd. Ski masks. Pistols pulled from beneath jackets.
“Rosa . . .” Papá pried Rosa’s fingers from the bookshelf. “Let go, amor.” He enfolded her clammy hand in his.
Beyond him, in the darkness, everyone stood subdued, gulping their drinks like children finishing their milk. “I guess the party’s over,” Rosa’s grandmother said sadly.
Mamá replied, soothing. “This won’t last long.” Her gaze found Rosa. “The lights will come back on.”
And they did, a few minutes later, flooding the room with color and laughter and cries of relief.
Papá’s brow furrowed. “Are you okay?”
“Sí, Papá.” Rosa pulled her hand free and wiped her cheeks. She wanted air, fresh air. “I just need to go to the bathroom.”
“Do you feel nauseous?” He gripped her arm.
“No, Papá.” She rolled her eyes at him, a sixteen-year-old rolling her eyes at her father, she knew just how to do that, to look like she was the same as everyone else. “I just have to go to the bathroom.” She turned and he let her go. She felt his eyes follow her as she slid past her cousins, her aunts and uncles. Then she rounded the corner, out of sight, and opened the front door.
Air. Rosa sucked in a thirsty lungful, then another. The spotlight, glaring through the mist, turned the patio a sickly yellow.
Rosa sat down on a bench beside a tile and terra-cotta fountain. Beyond the high cement wall that edged the patio, she could hear her grandfather’s guachimán, standing guard and blowing his whistle. As the mournful hoot died, she heard the electrified wires humming like bees through the bougainvillea that topped the wall.
It had always seemed so enormous, that wall. Once, when Rosa was little, and stupid and fearless, she had ventured beyond it to paint a cement lamppost blue. All the way around and as high as she could reach, a blue the color of the sky. She had felt so happy with herself, and with the blue paint she’d found in her grandfather’s garage.
The lamppost was dirty and faded now. They’d passed it tonight on their way to the party.
It’s still beautiful, Rosa. That blue.
It was the same blue as the Cesip. Rosa trailed a finger through the fountain’s shadowy little pool, and listened to the whisper in her head.
Sometimes Rosa thought the whisper was the Virgin. But then she always laughed at herself. Santa María, talking to her? She wasn’t really crazy if she could laugh at herself.
You could go out again, Rosa. Outside the wall.
I could go to Salvador, Rosa thought.
But her father wouldn’t take her. There was no point in even asking.
Impatiently, she flicked a forefinger against the water, sending drops flying. Inside the house, someone was plucking a guitar . Rosa heard her mother’s lilting soprano. I remember the day I met you. I remember the afternoon.
They’d be dancing soon, if they weren’t already.
The front door opened and a fruity smell of lip gloss drifted down the walk. Rosa’s cousin Gabriela picked her way over the patio and grimaced at the bench. “Is that wet?”
Rosa shook her head and slid sideways to make room. “You’re not dancing?”
“To that?” Gabriela grabbed her throat as if she’d swallowed poison. “Fico would kill me if I asked.”
“Where is he?”
“Out back, smoking a cigarette.” She sighed and sat down. “I wish he didn’t smoke.”
“Is it like kissing an ashtray?”
Gabriela giggled. “Not really.”
“It was nice of him to come. I mean, a family party and all.”
Gabriela tossed back her hair, a long curtain of it, glossy and brown and enviably straight. “What are you doing out here all by yourself?”
“Did my father send you out to ask that?”
Gabriela shrugged. “He wondered where you were, is all.”
“I was thinking of taking a walk.”
“Are you kidding? Why?”
Rosa didn’t know why. It was the wall, maybe. Or the cement post. Or the empanada. She turned to her cousin. “Would you come with me to Salvador? To see Magda’s family?”
“What?” Gabriela’s eyes rounded, darkened. “Rosa, what are you talking about? You can’t go back there.”
Rosa could practically taste her fear. Sour and sharp, like Papá’s.
“My father will never go back,” she said.
“Can you blame him?” Gabriela shook her head reproachfully. “You’re his only child. He almost lost you.”
Rosa felt tears pricking her eyes. Abruptly, without meaning to, without even wanting to, she felt sad for her father. Sad, in a deep-as-the-ocean way. All those years. All that talk of solidarity. All of it gone, like Magda.
She swallowed. Her throat ached.
“Ay, prima.” Gabriela leaned over and rubbed Rosa’s arms. “Why don’t you come inside? It’s freezing out here.” She stood, hunching her shoulders against the mist. “I dressed all wrong for tonight.”
Rosa stared into the pool. Where the fountain hit the water, dark ripples spread outward.
Gabriela’s voice rose. “It’s too tight on me, isn’t it? This dress.”
Startled, Rosa looked up. “Ay, Gabriela, don’t be ridiculous.”
“Do I look fat?” Gabriela tugged at her dress, a sleeveless sheath the color of communion wine. Gabriela was overacting, smoothing the dress with fretful little pats.
Like a tía. She looked just like a tía.
Rosa laughed in spite of herself, and Gabriela laughed, too. Then she took Rosa’s hands and Rosa let herself be pulled, up and out of the mist and back into her grandparents’ house.
SEVEN
A singsong tinkle of shattering glass pierced the darkness. Alonso heard his father raging and sat up. Livia and Diana shot up in their bed, and Diana began to cry.
“Shhh.” Livia put her arms around her little sister. “Shhh. It’s just Papi, Diana. Shhh.”
The shouted curses sounded distant, as if their father were yelling out a window.
The old man had gotten fired on Monday. He’d shown up drunk at the parking lot where he worked as a security guard. Not the kind of man you wanted guarding the Mercedes. Now he walked the streets, an ambulante like so many others. Selling toothpaste and marionettes and little plastic fans people could stick on their dashboards. Chasing after cars begging people to buy. He’d stumbled through the door a few hours ago, stinking of beer and vomit. His feet swollen and his face crumpled like a brown paper bag.
Alonso’s toes curled on the cold cement as he padded across the floor.
In the living room, sheets and blankets lay coiled across the bed. Alonso’s father stood shouting out the open window, hands clenching the iron bars that cut the nighttime mist into stripes. At his feet, below the window, lay a rock and a scattering of broken glass.
Alonso heard Livia creep from the bedroom. Felt her hand, a silky little bag of bones, slip into his.
With a last, savage curse, their father slammed the window shut. Another shard of glass tinkled, broke free, and fell. Livia pulled free as he turned and dropped into bed, stepping to his side to pull a blanket over to him. Then she bent in the shadows to pick a scrap of paper from the floor.
It had entered the house wrapped around the stone that crashed through their front window, and it had two words written on it.
Magda ladrón. Magda thief.
Alonso read without flinching. Livia looked up at him, her thin face pinched, her eyes big and sad. Too sad for nine-year-old eyes.
“Come on,” he said. “You want to sleep with me and Gustavo?”
But Livia shook her head and crawled into bed with Diana, who had fallen back to sleep easily, the way she always did.
Alonso lay in his bed, listening to the sounds of the darkened house. Diana’s sighs were slow and steady, Livia’s uneven and wakeful. Gustavo’s breathing sounded raspy, full of rattles and gurgles. Out in the living room, their father began to snore.
Magda ladrón.
The words had begun appearing on Salvador’s walls a week ago. Red scribbles that didn’t say a thing about the People’s War or Chairman Gonzalo. Just Magda ladrón. Magda thief. And beneath the words, sometimes, a crude picture of a refrigerator.
Alonso tucked the blanket under Gustavo’s chin. Another sleepless night lay waiting. Another night replaying the video of the Cesip, exploding with his mother inside. Blown to smithereens. And why? Because she wouldn’t let Sendero use the clinic? Because when the gringos donated the new refrigerator, Dr. Pablo gave her the old one? Why? It made no sense. The Senderistas said they wanted to help poor people. They said they hated rich people. So why did they kill his mother?
Eyes open, Alonso stared at the darkness. Just once, he’d like to meet one of them. One Senderista. Meet him and ask him why.
And then, he figured, he’d kill the son of a bitch.
Señorita Ana came by the next morning while they were eating breakfast. She knocked on the door and they all jumped. Nobody stopped by much anymore.
Carrying Gustavo, who’d been sitting on his lap slurping porridge, Alonso’s father let her in. She followed him into the kitchen and kissed them all good morning. Her jeans were perfectly blue, and there was just a sprinkling of dust on her shiny black pumps.
“Coffee?”
She nodded, so Alonso got up to make her a cup. When she sat down, Diana clambered onto her lap.
“I can do a somersault,” Diana announced proudly.
“Really?” Señorita Ana’s voice rose a little.
Diana nodded. “You want to see?”
Alonso’s father grunted at her to finish her breakfast, or Diana might have gone tumbling past their feet. Señorita Ana would never have said no. Alonso smiled at her as he handed her the coffee.
She had been his mother’s best friend, one of the three or four women who’d worked hardest to set up the Cesip and keep it going. After the murder, she had offered to watch Gustavo and Diana while he and Livia went to school.
Señorita Ana took a tiny, careful sip. Then she looked at Alonso with a sad smile. “Alonso, will you please take the children outside? There’s something I need to tell your father.”
Alonso sighed, but he took the kids outside, and after a little while Señorita Ana came out and said good-bye. She said she and her father were leaving Salvador. They had decided to go back to Oxapampa, where they’d come from a long, long time ago. She cried a little as she hugged them, but they all, even Diana, were dry-eyed when she left. Alonso figured they were getting to be experts at saying good-bye.
