The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos (27 page)

“He showed me his thing.” She does not mention the disgusting glue on her stomach.

“Luz,” said Irene, “tell me exactly what he did. What did he do after he showed you his thing?”

“He put his tongue in my mouth.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.” Luz thought of her mother finding out and began to cry again. “Do you think I’m going to have a baby? My mother is
going to kill me,” she said. Her head still pounded from the aftereffects of too many piña coladas.

“Stop it,” said Irene, “You’re not going to have a baby. Babies don’t come from tongues. Your mother is not going to find
out anything unless you tell her.” With evident relief, Irene pulled down her bathing suit bottom and sat on the toilet. She
looked at Luz and two stern lines appeared on her forehead. “God, Luz, Miguel’s a guy you barely know,” she said as she peed.
“Who told you to come up to the room with him? What did you expect? He probably thought you knew what you were doing.”

Luz hoped Irene would get wrinkles on her forehead. “Make them go,” she said. “Those boys, make them go.”

Irene stared at her, as if sizing up the situation. “Okay,” she said finally. “Have a bath; you’ll be fine if you have a bath.”

Luz showered, scrubbing herself almost raw with a pale blue pumice stone supplied by the hotel. When she emerged, a towel
wrapped around her body, another around her head, Luz and Lily were sitting on the bed, conferring in lowered voices. They
did not see her. There was no sign of Moriche Sanchez, Elvis Crespo, and Miguel Rojas. She went back into the bathroom and
closed the door quietly. She put her ear to it.

Irene was saying, “Look, she’s acting weird, and if she tells on us, there will be a lot of trouble all round. Mercedes has
no idea I’m with Moriche, and if she finds out, she’ll tell my father out of pure spite, and he will kill me for sure. And
you’ll probably have to become a nun.”

“But what happened? Something must have happened.”

“Ay, que vaina, Lily. He kissed her. And she’s such a zanahoria that she thought she could get pregnant from it.”

“Why did he kiss her?”

“Now you are sounding as stupid and immature as Luz. Why wouldn’t he? He’s a guy, isn’t he? You should never have brought
her, the little whining baby,” said Irene, “but since you did, you’ve got to keep her quiet. You’ve just got to, Lily.”

“Okay,” said Lily, “calm down.”

When she came back into the room, Luz pretended she hadn’t heard anything. She couldn’t exactly defend herself, since what
Irene said was true: she had invited Miguel Rojas to the hotel room. Or had he invited himself? She couldn’t remember. She
couldn’t remember because she had been drunk. No one had poured glasses and glasses of piña colada down her throat against
her will, true. But Irene and Lily could have stopped her. Her mother would probably not see it that way, though. It was her
own fault, acting like a little campecina slut, that’s probably what her mother would say. So what was the point of telling?
Even if Luz hated her guts right now, Irene was right.

Pulling her T-shirt over her head and zipping up her jeans, she emerged from the bathroom and said, “Where to next, chamas?”
As though everything were normal.

“I know,” said Irene, giving Lily a warning look, “let’s go to the shopping arcade and find something really chévere to buy.”

In the Macuto shopping arcade, they went into the jewelry store first. And there, on the display table, Luz saw a silver charm
bracelet and wanted it. It had the tiny figures of Las Tres Potencias dangling from it—Maria Lionza, El Negro Felipe, and
El Indio Guaicaipuro. Luz thought her mother would love it; and it wouldn’t hurt to have something to offer, something to
temper the storm, in case it turned out she had made her mother into a grandmother. Looking at the label, she saw it was marked
half off at six hundred bolívares. Just then, Irene picked it up and said, “I’m buying this bracelet.”

“No,” Luz said, “I saw it first.” Suddenly, possession of the bracelet became the most important thing in the world.

Irene seemed about to protest, then changed her mind. “Okay,” she said.

“Have you got any money? I don’t have enough for this bracelet,” Luz called out to Lily, who was looking at hair clips on
the other end of the store.

“I’ve got three hundred,” said Lily, looking at Luz. “Take it.”

Her lips pressed into a thin line of concentration, Luz dug into the pocket of her jeans, retrieved the now crumpled bolívar
notes Señor Ismael had given her, and completed her purchase while Lily called her father from the phone at the front counter
and told him that she and Luz were ready to come home. Irene said she’d take a taxi back home. “Call me tomorrow, we’ll make
another date to meet with Moriche and Elvis before you go back to Valencia.” Luz was clearly excluded from any future plans.

Before they went to sleep that night, Lily put her arm around Luz and said, “You’re okay, right? You can’t tell anyone what
we did today, Lucecita, please, I beg of you. Because if you do, I’ll be sent to the convent for the rest of my life, and
Irene’s father will put a bullet right though his own daughter’s heart; you have no idea how tyrannical he is about her.”

“Stop acting like an opera star. I won’t tell anyone,” said Luz. However, that was before she discovered that the bracelet
was missing from her towel bag.

“She took my bracelet,” she said to Lily.

“Irene? Don’t be silly. She would never steal your bracelet. You probably left it at the store.”

But Luz was certain that Irene was the culprit, and as far as she was concerned, the idea of Irene with a bullet through her
heart was not a displeasing one.

At first no one was too worried when Luz went off her food on the fourth day of Semana Santa, two days after the outing to
the Macuto. Perhaps it was a bug, they thought. But three days after that, on Easter Sunday, when Luz refused to get out of
bed and dress herself, Marta threw up her hands in despair and Luz could hear her complaining to Consuelo in the kitchen.
“I’ll talk to her when we come back from Mass,” said Consuelo. When they returned from the church, Consuelo came to the room
Luz shared with her mother, carrying a bowl of steaming mondongo on a tray.

“Tell me what is wrong, Luz,” she said, holding up a spoon of thick soup to the girl’s lips. “I’m sure we can find a solution
together.”

But Luz had turned her face to the wall.

Lily came in next. “Mami says I’m not to leave this room without you. ¿Qué te pasa, Lucecita? Please tell me.”

To this day, Luz doesn’t know what made her say, “The bracelet,” or why the loss of the bracelet symbolized everything that
was wrong with her life.

Through half closed eyes, Luz observed that Lily seemed relieved and confused at the same time. “I’ll ask Irene about the
bracelet, if that will make you happy.”

And just like that, Luz felt better. Without looking at Lily, she got out of bed, had a bath, combed her hair, pulled on a
clean pair of jeans and a white shirt. She walked into the kitchen, sat down at the table and ate an enormous bowl of mondongo.

Luz was certain that Lily hadn’t known what went on at the Macuto between her and Miguel Rojas, or later in the hotel room
between herself and Irene. She knew it was irrational to blame Lily for something she didn’t know at the time. But there it
was, she couldn’t let Lily off the hook.

It was a day before they returned to Valencia. Luz was on her way to the panadería and saw Irene and Lily talking just inside.
She stood by the wrought-iron gate at the entrance and listened.

“I’m in a lot of trouble with Mercedes, chama,” said Irene. “Apparently she suspected about Moriche and me. She went to the
Macuto and talked to the management and the waiters and everything. She showed them a photograph of me. One of the waiters
told her he remembered me, and told her that I was with two other girls and three guys. He told her we had a room and that
one of the girls and one of the guys had gone into it together. He even told her that one of the other guys we were with was
an indio. Coño, chama, he blabbed
everything
to my mother. So of course, she just
knew
the indio with me was Moriche. Pues, Mercedes threw a fit, armó un saperoco, and the result is that Moriche and I are running
away together, as soon as we can figure out a way.”

Luz is surprised when, instead of gasping with illicit excitement about Irene’s plan, Lily says, “Luz was different after
that day. I think it had something to do with Miguel Rojas. She got sick, she wouldn’t eat, and that probably made Mami suspicious.
But I didn’t tell her anything and neither did Luz. I’m certain.”

“Maybe, but she made sure to draw attention to herself. I knew we couldn’t trust her.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Listen, she’s not so innocent. She’s the one who took him to the hotel room, and drank like fifty piña coladas, which
he
paid for, by the way. What did she expect? So maybe he showed her his thing. Big deal. She got what she asked for. And it’s
not like she got pregnant or anything.”

“Maybe he did what? You said he only kissed her—you acted like it was impossible that he could have done anything more.” Lily’s
voice was rising in pitch and volume.

“
SHHHHHHHSH!
Listen,” said Irene, “I said that because that is what you wanted me to do. You felt guilty for bringing her, for using her
as part of the cover for meeting Elvis, and don’t tell me it isn’t true.”

“It
isn’t
true!” Lily whispered.

“Yes it is,” Irene said, and walked out the gate, sticking her tongue out at Luz on the way out.

“Crybaby,” she said.

“Thief,” Luz replied.

Luz went into the panadería. As she walked past Lily, she stared at her triumphantly, but Lily did not meet her eyes. Lily
had never been able to meet her eyes after that, always looking somewhere near the top of Luz’s head whenever she spoke to
her. Coward, Luz thought, but did not say.

When the girls returned to Valencia the following day, the equation between Lily and Luz had changed. Luz felt new, shiny
and powerful, as if the act of eating and shitting out a large quantity of mondongo had cleansed her of what happened at the
Macuto, while Lily was meeker and milder, a diluted version of herself. Lily was more careful now, palliating, as though Luz
might be a ticking bomb.

Luz knew Lily felt guilty for using her as a beard to go out with Irene, and for exposing her to a situation for which Luz
had been ill-prepared, and that’s how Luz wanted her to feel. Irene hadn’t been specific, and if Lily thought Miguel had put
his thing in her, so much the better.

But power was not love. Lily still did not love her more than she loved Irene. And when she got to choose a friend to go to
Maquiritare, it was not Luz she chose.

Though Lily had temporarily lost her mind after the bad business with Irene in Maquiritare, she had recovered and rejoined
the convent school a month later, where she would graduate with Luz three years later. And during this time Luz developed
a fondness for measuring her own happiness in terms of before and after Irene.

A few days after graduation, and after returning to Tamanaco, Luz unpacked and unwrapped the clay image of a dancer she had
made in school. Carrying it carefully, she went out to the patio, where Consuelo stood at her easel painting the light through
the trees in watercolor on paper.

“I made this for you,” she said, offering the dancer to Consuelo in cupped hands.

“Thank you, Luz,” said Consuelo, laying down her brush, “it’s lovely. Come, let’s put it on the side table in my bedroom.”
When they went into the bedroom Luz placed the clay dancer on the table. And that was when she saw the bracelet. Just casually
lying there on the floor, almost under the bed. What was it doing there?

She picked it up and held it up to the light. “I remember this bracelet,” she said. Consuelo took it from her and put it in
the drawer of the bedside table.

Consuelo sighed. “We found it in Maquiritare years ago. It must have belonged to that poor girl. The Guardia Nacional said
they had no use for it. I meant to return it to her mother, but it slipped my mind.” If at all it was necessary to refer to
what happened in Maquiritare, to the disappearance of Irene Dos Santos, everyone referred to her as “that poor girl” and to
the incident as “the accident,” though there was an unspoken agreement not to make any reference to it at all, however veiled,
in Lily’s presence. “It must have fallen when I was cleaning out the drawer. Don’t tell Lily. I’d rather she not be reminded
of what happened.”