Come Together, Fall Apart Page 9
Tio Arrocha looks at me and says, I was thinking, Rosaria, that you deserve a brand-new dress. I sit up straighter at the sound of this and he says, I know a place in the city. He extends his hand to me and I’m up on my feet ready to go. He’s always been my favorite uncle even though he lives way over in a poor part of town where all the walls of the houses are splitting wood and all the roofs are sagging. But he’s a good man, my mama always says, one of the best men I know. Not all of them are like that.
We take a banana-yellow taxi to the store. The banana-yellows are the nicer ones but they cost more money. When Mama and I have to take a cab we take the black ones with the ripped seats and the windows that are stuck so they never roll down and the drivers who are new so they almost never know any of the shortcuts that even Charito and me know just from playing around town. On the way to the store I see the same people on the streets as always: the man who peels fruit with a plastic razor and hands the skins to birds; the kids who are building a fort out of shopping carts tipped up on their sides; the men playing dominoes, always wearing their guayaberas and their nice hats like they’re playing dominoes with the president. Then we start passing nicer places—jewelry stores with names like Mercurio and Reprosa, and skyscrapers made out of glass. It feels far away from Avenida Central, where my mama usually takes me to shop.
In the dress store we walk up to the counter and my Tío Arrocha talks to the mustached man who’s working there and tells him to let me try on anything in the store. The man looks at me and smiles. He says he doesn’t know if there is anything in the store pretty enough for a girl as pretty as me. Then he bends down and winks and tells me he’ll be right there at the counter when I find something I like.
Tio Arrocha takes me by the hand. We look at the racks along the wall and at the dresses that hang from the ceiling, falling around us like the downpours that come for a few minutes at a time during the rainy season when all you can see are the big bloated water drops coating the whole world. I almost stop breathing because the dresses are so perfect. More perfect even than my first communion dress, and more perfect than Charito’s mom’s wedding dress, which we play in sometimes since her mom says she doesn’t care a thing about that dress anymore ever since Charito’s dad left.
The dress we end up taking has a white top with a little bow, big, round, white, puffed-out sleeves, white ruffled trim along the bottom, and a red satin skirt that spreads out like the fans the ladies use in church. Tío Arrocha says I am the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. The mustached man behind the counter agrees, so it is settled. We pay, and the mustached man wraps it up and even though I walk out in my old lavender dress, something about me feels new.
The banana-yellow taxi drops us off at home and when we walk inside Papa is standing there. Just like that. Even though I haven’t seen him in a few years, I recognize him right off because of old photographs and, I suppose, just because I remember. Tio Arrocha stands still at first but then walks over to him, shakes his hand, gives his brother a pat on the back, and mumbles a few things that I don’t hear. My mama runs out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel, looking a little red in the face, and says quietly, Jorge’s come back to us. The way she uses his first name makes me think she is talking more to Tio Arrocha than to me. But that’s all she says. I am near the door with my new dress hanging over my arms, the plastic wrap sticking to me.
We should go out and celebrate, she says next. All of us. I think that would be nice. She looks around again and you can see the pleading in her eyes like she is helpless, like a cotton ball in a tornado. Rosa, you could wear your new dress, she says. We are standing in the silence, lodged in it like fossils, the minutes stretching out patiently around us until, finally, a snap.
Yes, I think that would be fine, Tio Arrocha says. We’ll go tomorrow night. I’ll come by the house tomorrow night at six-thirty.
My mama looks pleased, beams at him, and tells him we will be ready at six-thirty sharp and so, until then. Tío Arrocha nods to Papa once more and walks out, stopping to kiss me on the head, just barely on the top of my hair, before leaving.
Mama tells me to come and give my papa a hug, which is what I have been dying to do. I put my dress down carefully and run to him. I wrap my arms around his waist and press my face into his belly, against his white cotton shirt that smells like gasoline jumbled with soap. I breathe him in and hold on. He bends down and gives me a hug good and proper and tells me oh, he’s missed me so much. How old are you now? he asks and I tell him eight. And he mumbles that he can’t believe how much I’ve grown. After a minute Mama says, Okay you two, now everything’s back to normal, so good. And then she suggests that I go try on my dress for them.
I leave my old sandals in the bedroom and am barefoot when I come back out. Papa makes a fuss. You’ve gotten so pretty since the last time I saw you, look how much your hair has grown—all the way down your back, are you making good grades in school, you look like a princess in that dress, how long it’s been! I am a caterpillar and a butterfly at the same time—unsure of the attention, wanting to stay hidden, but also feeling like I’ve broken into a new life where I am more glittering and confident and have left the other one behind. I practice curtsying and spinning and I laugh with Papa until I can hear the yucca frying and I can smell the garlic from the sancocho filling up the air and Mama finally tells me to go change for dinner and to wash please before I come to the table.
That night I have two parents to kiss me good night. Falling asleep I think about how lucky I am for that. Charito and I are forever wishing for our papas to come back even though Charito’s mom says we are all better off with them gone. But she never knew my papa and she wouldn’t say that if she knew. Before he left, he used to play with me, take me on walks, and swing me around in the air like a carousel. He would take me to the swimming pool at the Intercontinental Miramar Hotel, sneak me in like we were guests, and we would splash around doing belly flops. I try to remember, as I fall asleep, why Mama told me he left but I’m not sure I ever knew.
I wake up later to my door creaking open. Papa is standing in my room. I think maybe he is confused because he hasn’t been here in so long he can’t remember which room is his. So I whisper, Papa, this is my room, but he doesn’t move. I can’t even tell if his eyes are open or not. It’s almost like he’s a ghost, swimming through the dark. Maybe he’s walking in his sleep like the people on the streets at night, so I start to get up to help him back to his room but he whispers, No, stay where you are, it’s okay. And there is something about how he says it’s okay, because I hadn’t even asked, that makes me feel like it’s not. A few seconds later he starts in a little zigzag over to my bed and I think maybe he just wants to talk because he’s missed me so much. But then he gets into my bed, under the covers, like I do sometimes with Mama when the rain is too hard and the thunder too loud. I can feel him. I can feel the warmth of him, his woolly cheek against my face. I can hear him breathing deep and low. I can smell him, still like gasoline and soap but also sweet and watery like alcohol when he breathes out. I am lying rigid, a plank of wood, a tree that’s fallen over into my bed. He is playing with my hair, winding it around through his fingers, and he tells me I have hair like silk, hair like a waterfall, hair like a million rivers. I am still confused about why he’s here in my bed and when he talks the words all fall over on top of each other, like a row of dominoes. He kisses my forehead and the tip of my nose and his mouth trips down to meet my mouth. But it’s not the same kind of kiss he gave me when he first saw me. It’s harder and longer like the people I see on the television, like I saw Mama kiss Tio Arrocha once when they thought I wasn’t looking, full on the mouth. And suddenly I am more than just confused, I am scared, trembling like a little baby. I try to draw my head back deep into the pillow but he moves with me. I try to wiggle away and twist my head, to drag my lips away from his, but he is holding on to my hair with one hand and pulling it until I feel it breaking from my scalp, pulling it like
he thinks he owns it and is trying to take it for himself. So I stay put and try to force up a sound from my throat but it gets stuck there. All around my mouth it is wet and his other hand, the hand that’s not in my hair, is against my belly now, under my nightshirt, and I try to slide out from under him. I dig my heels into the bed but he is pulling my hair harder now and still kissing and moving his hand around in a circle on my belly, his fingertips passing just underneath the elastic band of my pajama shorts, his nails scraping along my skin, his sour breath unfolding against my cheek again and again. I would give up everything, I would give up my brand-new dress, to make this stop, I am thinking, when all of a sudden it does. It stops. His hand falls away onto the mattress between us and his fingers loosen in my hair. When I look over, he is sleeping beside me.
I am breathing hard. My eyes are wet. My mouth is wet. I stare up at the ceiling, trying to figure out what just happened, trying to remind myself that my papa is a good man, trying to tell myself that he didn’t mean any of it. I want to get up, I want to get away from him and figure all this out; I want to get away from the smell of his alcohol breath, which is low and regular now that he’s sleeping. But I can’t move at first, scared because I don’t want to wake him. Finally, after what feels like a whole year, as quietly as I can, I get out of the bed, scoot down to the end, and creep off I turn around and look at him. Something swells inside me, something hateful and thick and hurtful and sad, and at that moment more than anything else in the world I want to get as far away from him as I can. I want to sink to the middle of the earth, I want to float out to the middle of the ocean. The back of my head is burning, throbbing, like his fingers are still there in my hair, holding me down. It’s like fire spreading out and I reach up to try to stop it but I don’t even want to touch my hair anymore, I don’t want to put my fingers through the pieces like he did. I feel sick at the thought of it touching my back now, hanging off my head, ready to be pulled again. And before I know it, I am standing, with the door locked, in the bathroom, up on the wooden step stool, looking in the small, wavy mirror. I am cutting it all off, as close to the roots as I can get and promising myself that he will never never never again be able to hold me like that. I cut the millions of rivers of hair until it’s all dried up and washed out and can be filled with nothing but wind. Little by little, I feel the fire cool.
In the morning I am gone. I spend half the day at the old rotten beach by the construction zone and in the afternoon I go over to Charito’s. She laughs when she sees me. Look at your hair, she says. What did you do? I tell her I cut it but I don’t tell her why. She shrugs and says I am crazy and that now I will have to be the boy whenever we play for sure, then giggles again and shakes her head. We spend the afternoon playing and when we dress up I can’t believe my eyes when I see myself in the mirror again, the first time since last night, my hair sticking out all over the place like a pineapple top. I stand there looking at what I’ve done. There is something about it that I like. It feels like a wall that he won’t ever be able to get through again and like maybe I am not even the same person he touched in the first place.
My mama calls late in the day to see if I am over at Charito’s and to remind me about the dinner tonight and to come home soon and get cleaned up and to wear my new dress and be ready for Tio Arrocha to pick us up. This morning I had forgotten all about the dress. I didn’t even tell Charito about it—the beautiful dress that will make me the perfect new me. Charito’s mom yells up to us and tells me to hurry, I don’t want to be late, my mama made it sound like a very important dinner. As I walk downstairs on my way out she stops me and asks what in the devil I did to my hair. Did Charito do this to you? she asks. I did it, I tell her. And when I say it, I feel proud. I hope you didn’t just do it here, she says, because your mama is going to hit the ceiling when she sees this and I don’t want her calling me about it. Then she laughs and runs a hand over the patchy pieces and says, Actually, I sort of like it, Rosa. Then she tells me to go on home.
I walk to my house, past the lottery vendors and a man selling popsicles and condensed milk, and when I arrive the only thing I want to do is go straight to my room and put on my dress and feel beautiful perfect wonderful and stay inside the wall I built that he can’t get past.
My dress is hanging in plastic on the back of the closet door. I take it down and put it on along with my old best sandals, although even they look different now—you hardly notice the safety pin anymore—and I practice my curtsys, spreading the skirt out and letting it fall again and again and again until finally I hear my mama calling me to come out please. Tío Arrocha will be here any minute and we want to see you, Rosa, we want to see our little girl. I feel like God is reaching down his giant hand and scooping me up, holding me, carrying me, when I walk out to where both my mama and my papa are waiting. My mama turns around and drops her purse and throws her hands over her mouth and says, What have you done to yourself? Is this a joke? Oh, Rosa! What a cruel joke to play on me and on your papa, especially, who hasn’t seen you in so long and now, to see you this way! Did Charito do this to you? She gets louder and louder. Papa says quietly, Who did this to you? And I know he knows the answer to his own question. We both know it was him, really. But he doesn’t say anything else, just stands there in black pants and a gray guayabera, his cheeks a little flushed, as Mama goes on in a voice that rattles, You must have the devil in your soul to do something like this! On today of all days! Tio Arrocha will be here any minute. We can’t go out to dinner with you looking like this. She starts pacing around and looks up and shakes her hands and holds them out like she is waiting for an answer to fall down from heaven to explain. You’ve ruined everything, Rosaria. You were going to look so pretty in your dress and Tio Arrocha was so kind to buy it for you and now look what you’ve done!
I stare at Mama and wonder if she knows what really happened, what my papa is really like, and because I know the truth, I think how crazy she sounds. She goes on and on and still Papa says nothing. But she could go on and on forever and even if Papa said something, I wouldn’t be listening. I just stand there feeling more beautiful than ever.
CHASING BIRDS
Maybe it had been raining for years. By the second night, it was easy to feel that way. They had come to this spot, in the heart of Panama, two days ago and even then it had been raining. There was no sign of respite. It was as if they had come to a different universe, where threads of rain were laced through the air, as if rain were just part of the atmosphere, something that had always been there and always would be, as if rain here was simply a fact. The corrugated zinc roof that stretched over their room acted like a giant drum, exaggerating each ping of dropping rain until it sounded like pebbles were crashing from the sky.
A ruffle of thunder unfolded. June closed her eyes. She hoped the roof wouldn’t cave in. Then she remembered that earlier that day she had leaned her whole weight against a window and it hadn’t shattered the way she thought it might. So maybe the roof would hold after all.
“Harv,” June whispered. The room smelled like old wet washcloths. “Harv.” She waited as another surge of thunder reeled across the sky. “Harvey,” she said, loud enough to be heard. He didn’t move. “Harvey!” she shouted, but the pounding symphony on the roof drowned her out. “I want to leave!” she screamed.
The city had leapt up and taken June by surprise. She was expecting something smaller, more rural. But after they rented the car and started driving, she saw a huge, bustling capital, poor but inescapably vibrant. She peered out the tinted windows of their small car, her purse tight between her knees, as Harvey drove and fiddled with the air-conditioning. There were more billboards than she had seen anywhere, clumped along the side of the road, many of them blank, many of them peeling. Banks and hotels and apartment high-rises rose up around them, everything built into hills of untended, tall, wispy grass freckled with tiny flowers.
They didn’t get lost, not once. Something Harvey was extremely proud of When the
y pulled off Avenida Balboa and into the roundabout in front of the Intercontinental Miramar Hotel, it was clear they had come into a wealthy pocket of the city. The glass buildings were triumphant and imposing, and the giant, delicate arms of construction cranes swayed over them.
Harvey handed the car over to the valet. “Where will you park it?” he wanted to know.
The valet pointed to a lot at the side of the hotel, the front lip of which dropped straight down into the bay.
“Make sure it doesn’t fall in there. This is a rental,” Harvey said.
The valet nodded.
“It’s not my car,” Harvey said, as if he were talking to someone hard of hearing.
The valet nodded again. It was hard to tell whether he understood.
The next morning, while they ate fried corn cakes and ham at Restaurante Boulevard, the waiter told them that the very thing Harvey was afraid of had happened just last week. The valet hadn’t used the parking brake and the car had rolled right off the edge, plunging into the water. The waiter laughed. “The car try to escape. It want to swim,” he said, and Harvey and June just nodded.
They were in the city only one night but it was enough time to feel overwhelmed. Appleton, Wisconsin, where they lived, where June had spent her whole life, suddenly seemed so tidy and manageable in comparison. Here, the city felt boundless around her. As if she were no more than a small crumb in the center of it, and it ebbed in concentric circles around her and around her, endlessly outward. It seemed so easy to lose the sense of your own place in a city like this, to lose the sense of your place in the world entirely.