Bulletproof Vest (18 page)

“Anyways,” I say, “I've written a few poems about the whole ordeal in my journal.”

“I thought you weren't a writer,” he says, cocking his eyebrow and looking at me as if I've just come into focus.

“I'm not,” I say. “I was just venting.”

He asks if I want to read him any of it, and I tell him no, thank you, because I know that if he saw the things I write in my journal, all the things I keep locked away in my head, he'd think I was insane.

“Another time perhaps,” he says, smiling and offering me another cigarette. We smoke and watch the pastel hues ripple across the surface of the river as the sun goes down behind the silhouette of the buildings.

The next day, I take the Metro to the Père Lachaise Cemetery and visit Jim Morrison's grave. I've never been to a cemetery; the only image I have of one has faded in my memory, the way plastic flowers tied to a cross and left on the side of the road fade in the sun. My cemetery sits on a hill in the outskirts of town, and though there must be numerous graves beyond its iron gates, in my version there is only the one, and I see it exactly as it was described to me—a mound of dirt marked with a simple wooden cross, though where there was one cross, there are now two, side by side.

Before leaving Spain, I had called home and Sonia told me that my grandfather had passed away. He should have died years ago, I thought. When he was first diagnosed with diabetes, he should have dropped dead right then and there. Had he died then, my father would have never talked my brother into going back to Mexico. It seemed anyone who went back to that distant, dusty land never returned.

After leaving the cemetery I pick up a phone card, and on my way back to my hostel, I find a pay phone and call home.

“Where the hell have you been?” Sonia says, when she hears my voice.

“In Paris.”

“You're not even in Spain yet?” she says. “Mom has been in Madrid for like four days waiting for you.”

“Why did she change her ticket? I told her I'd call her back.”

“I don't know, but she's really worried about you,” she says. “You better call her.”

I jot down the name and number of the hotel and call right away, ask for Pascuala Venegas in room 504.

“That guest checked out this morning,” the woman says.

“Are you sure? She didn't say if she was going to a different hotel or if she was leaving the city for good?” I ask, though I know it's too late—she had come and gone and we had missed each other.

On my way back to the hostel, no matter how hard I try to drown out her voice, I can practically hear her asking all the things she has always asked:
Why are you like this? Why can't you be more like your sisters? Why can't you just talk to me? Why are you so distant?

All the questions for which I don't have answers.

*   *   *

When I return from abroad, I spend two weeks at home. I've been away at college for three years and no longer have a room. On the night before I leave for school, my mother insists that I stay with her.

“Madrid was horrible,” she says, while we lie side by side in the dark. “I sat in a plaza scanning every face that went by, thinking that one of those faces might be you. It was just awful.”

“Why did you change your ticket?” I say.

“I thought you would be there.” We lie in silence for a long time. “Mateo was a good man,” she says. “You shouldn't have left him. I really would have liked for you two to have gotten married.” I stare into the darkness and think that maybe I should tell her what really happened. Tell her about the letter he sent me, about how each time I have called him since I got back, the minute he hears my voice, he hangs up. “Can I ask you something?” she says.

“Sure.”

“Did you have sexual relations with him?”

This question catches me completely off guard. My mother and I rarely talk about anything, but we certainly never talk about sex. Perhaps what's even more shocking is her thinking that after having spent more than a year with Mathew, I may
not
have had sex with him. I can hear her breathing, can feel her waiting while I contemplate whether to tell her the truth or not.

“You shouldn't ask questions to which you might not want to know the answers,” I say.

“I want to know,” she says.

“I did.”

She sighs.

“That makes me very sad,” she says. “I really would have liked for you to still be a virgin when you got married.”

 

12

THE WALL

 

 

ALL ALONG THE FOOT OF THE WALL
, men are scattered. Some stand with the sole of their shoe pressing into the cinder block while others sit, leaning into it, the razor wire cutting into the blue sky above.

“Here,” his buddy says, holding a joint out to him. They are sitting next to each other, knees bent, head back, taking refuge in the sliver of shade the afternoon sun is casting along the bottom edge of the wall.

“That stuff doesn't agree with me,” he says, waving it away, saying that it either makes him sleepy or paranoid. The last time he had smoked weed, he was still living in Chicago and had stopped by to visit some friends, a young couple that lived near the bowling alley. Even before stepping onto their porch, he could already smell the weed coming through the screen door, the couple wild with laughter inside the house. They had offered him the joint, and he had taken a few drags, and later, on his way to the bowling alley, he had felt like he was suffocating in his own body. He had turned the car around and headed home to lie down for a bit, and had ended up sleeping until the next day.

“This is really good stuff, Jose,” his buddy says. “It will melt your cares away.”

There wasn't enough green on the planet to melt his cares away. When they first brought him back to Zacatecas, he had stood before a judge recounting the events of that day. Saying it had all started over a disagreement between Ricardo and Manuel, something about some horse races. He told the judge that he hadn't meant to shoot Manuel, that he had gone to hit him with the butt of his gun and a bullet had escaped. His testimony didn't hold up against that of the eyewitnesses, and perhaps the only part of his testimony that wasn't fabricated was his saying that he and Manuel had never had any problems, had always gotten along, and the minute his gun had gone off, he had regretted it. But it was too late for regrets, and the judge ruled that he had acted ruthlessly, and in cold blood had taken the life of his brother-in-law.

Almost immediately after he was sentenced, his parents put the house with the pink limestone arches up for sale.

“I will sell everything if I have to,” his father said, after his first visit. “I don't care if I have to sell all the livestock, La Mesa, La Peña, and the ranch even. I will sell it all, but I refuse to die and leave one of my sons behind bars,” he said, as if he had a choice in the matter. His diabetes had grown hungrier, perhaps aggravated by the stress of having a son in prison, and from behind the iron bars, Jose had watched the disease slowly consume his father—taking first his right leg and then the other—both amputated at mid-thigh.

The last time he had seen his father, they had pushed him in on a wheelchair, a wool blanket draped over the stumps where his legs had been. He told Jose that the house had sold. The owner of the zapatería had offered 750,000 pesos, and though it was considerably below market value, they had accepted the offer, as time was running out for all of them. Jose had been in prison for five months and there was talk of his being transferred to the much larger Zacatecas federal prison in the next town over and, if that were to happen, his fate would practically be sealed. Bribing someone in the federal system would be trickier and much more expensive than dealing with the local jurisdiction.

His parents deposited the money into an account for the attorney that was working on his case and, a month later, his father passed away. Jose had gone to speak with the comisario and asked for permission to attend his father's funeral.

“If we let you go, Jose, you're not going to try anything clever, are you?” Jose had given his word, and the comisario had agreed, because in a town where land and livestock were still bought and sold on nothing but a handshake, a man's word was only as good as the man himself.

On the day of the funeral, when the first bell rang out, Jose was already waiting for the two guards who would accompany him to the cathedral, and by the time the second bell rang out, the guards were escorting him down the limestone steps of the prison. Inside the cathedral, the air was cooler and smelled of wax and holy water. His father's coffin was sitting at the altar. The two guards waited at the entrance as he made his way toward the front, the rattle of his handcuffs mixed with a whisper here and a cough there as he walked by. The third bell rang out, the priest lifted his arms, and everyone rose. If he were going to try anything clever, this would've been when.

He took a seat in the front pew, next to his mother and sisters. After the service, he bid his father farewell and then eight men hoisted the coffin onto their shoulders and made their way out the cathedral's side door. He watched the procession as it headed toward the cemetery on the hill, on the outskirts of town, where his son was buried. The comisario had allowed him to cross the plaza and attend his father's service, but to go all the way to the cemetery was out of the question—word or no word.

A few months after his father died, they transferred him to the Zacatecas federal prison, and every day since he arrived at this place has felt like another brick in the wall. Each day solidifying against him, pushing him further from the reach of hope. He's heard that his mother's health has deteriorated so much that she can no longer fend for herself and is living with his youngest sister, who is selling off the livestock and land his father left behind at an alarming rate. If he ever does get out of this place, he'll be lucky if there is a sliver of land left for him to drop dead on.

He takes the joint, takes a long drag, though he knows no amount of weed is going to vanquish his troubles, even if Pascuala had recently sent him a letter saying that she forgave him for what he had done. That if he should ever get out of that place, she didn't want to have any problems with him. Whether or not she had forgiven him wasn't at the root of his turmoil because he knew he would never forgive himself. No amount of regret would ever make the past right again. Nothing would open the door that he himself had sealed shut with a single blast—his kids on one side of it and he on the other.

It had been ten years since he had loaded up his truck with their discarded clothing, towels from the factory where his wife worked, contraband, and a few photo albums. His baby girl, La Poderosa, had been ten years old when he left. Now she was twenty, and if by chance she were to show up on the other side of the bars during visiting hours, he probably wouldn't even recognize her. Ten years had come crashing down between them like an unstoppable avalanche. What stood between them now? Two thousand miles, these prison walls, the border itself—he would probably die inside this bedbug-infested place and never see any of his kids again.

He takes another drag and notices how, across the courtyard, heads are turning. A hand rises to scratch the welt on a biceps, eyes squint, and he gets the feeling that all these subtleties are connected—part of some grand scheme. He hands the joint back to his buddy and pushes himself to his feet, saying he's going to go lie down for a bit. When he reaches his cell, he stretches out on his cot and dozes, though there is no room for dreaming in a place like this—a place where nights are filled with thin sleep, sleep as translucent as rice paper.

 

13

MAN-IN-THE-MOON MARIGOLDS

 

 

ONCE I'M BACK AT SCHOOL
, I track down Mathew's number and call him several times, mainly around two in the morning, after the bars have closed. He usually tells me to fuck off and hangs up, but sometimes he'll humor me, ask how my semester is going.

“Fine,” I say, and try to convince him to come over. “We don't have to do anything. It would just be nice to cuddle,” I say.

“You're still hurting, aren't you?” he says.

“I already told you I was sorry,” I say. “It's not like I slept with the guy.”

“You're so fucked up and you don't even realize it,” he says one of those nights, and hearing him say this is sort of frightening, because he knows nothing about my past—not my brother, not my uncle, nor my father—nothing. Hearing him say this makes me feel like maybe he knows something I don't know, like maybe he can see something I'll only notice once it's too late.

“Are you coming over or not?” I say, clearing my throat.

“One day you're going to wake up and realize how fucked up you are,” he says.

“Fuck you,” I say, because I can practically see him lying in his bed and getting off on offending me. “I'm never calling you again.”

“Oh, you will.”

“Mark my words,” I say, “never again.” I slam the phone down before he has a chance to respond, and don't ever call him. Not drunk. Not sober. Never.

A few days after that conversation, I'm at a party. I step out onto the porch and run into a friend, who happens to be talking to Melissa.

“Hey, Maria, you know Melissa, right?” he says. “Weren't you guys just in Spain together?”

“Yeah,” I say, in the calmest tone I can muster, though the very sight of her face sends the blood boiling in my veins. “How was Italy?” I ask.

“Really nice,” she says, half-smiling.

“So, what places did you guys end up visiting?” I ask.

“Oh, we were in Milan for like a few days, then we spent like a week in Rome, and then went to Florence, and … um…” She presses her lips tight, too tight, and her face seems to grow grotesquely larger as she goes on and on, and soon the pores on the tip of her nose are the only thing I see, because everything else has receded, and she must feel the weight of my glare because she's struggling to complete her sentences.