The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos (33 page)

She had been shopping in the familiar (and cheaper) district of Sabana Grande with her boys in tow, when she realized she
couldn’t see them. Dropping her bags of purchases on the street, she had hurriedly retraced her steps through the busy marketplace,
calling out their names, stopping people and shouting in their faces, “Have you seen two boys, have you seen my boys?” For
two hours she combed the streets and bylanes, then, frantic, she ran to her old apartment. Only Pepe was at home. He had danced
till dawn in a cabaret the night before, and at first he ignored the bell, pulling the bedclothes over his head. But when
he realized it was Marta, pounding and screaming, he leapt out of bed with bloodshot eyes and ran to open the door. Then,
still in his pajamas, which consisted of boxer shorts and a tight woman’s T-shirt that ended above his belly button, and shoving
his feet into furry bunny slippers, he grabbed her hand and, together, they rushed back to the market. Compassionate shoppers
and shopkeepers spread the word about the missing boys, and soon shouts of “Juan Pedro! Jorge Luis!” could be heard on every
lane, but to no avail. It was as if the boys had simply evaporated into the air.

Finally they went to the local police station for help, but when the police saw Pepe, they laughed their heads off and said
maybe the children had run away in fear of this fag. Don’t worry, they said to Marta, whose swollen eyes reproached them,
boys run away all the time, but when their stomachs hurt from hunger, they return to their mothers. By this time, José, who
was returning to his apartment for his wallet, which he had forgotten on the dining table, had heard the news on the street.
He ran up the steps of the police station, taking them two at a time, and nearly collided with Marta and Pepe as they emerged.
Marta collapsed in his arms and began to weep uncontrollably. “Mis niños, mis niños,” she wailed, while Pepe stood by, shoulder
hunched in defeat, tears and mascara making tracks down his face.

“Stay here,” said José, and ran back toward the apartment. A few minutes later, he pulled up in his taxi. They drove to the
capital, twenty-five kilometers away. Stopping opposite the statue of Maria Lionza on the Avenida Francisco Fajardo, he said,
“Go and tell her about your boys.” At that point, such was Marta’s derangement and desperation, that even if José had said,
“Climb up a tree and screech like a monkey,” she would have complied. As if there were no cars whizzing by at a hundred kilometers
per hour, she had charged across the highway without stopping or looking. Standing before the statue, she had prayed with
all her corazón. Give me back my boys, she said over and over, with her head in her hands.

When she raised her head, a woman handed her a flyer. One side had a likeness of a bald monk in brown robes holding a child;
the reverse had a child figure in a blue cape with a shepherd’s staff in one hand and a little basket in the other.

When Marta returned to the taxi and showed the flyer to José, he told her that many Catholic saints were included in the pantheon
of Maria Lionza, and that those on the flyer were representations of San Antonio and El Santo Niño de Atoche. Both, he said
must be approached in different ways. According to José, in order to get San Antonio’s immediate attention, it would be necessary
to scold and threaten him, and in extreme cases such as Marta’s, bind his statue with rope and place it in a dark place, until
that which was lost was found. To appease El Santo Niño, he said, she should fill a small basket with dried grasses, candy,
toys, rum, and cigars. Next, she should write a letter to El Niño, asking for the return of the boys. Finally, she must carry
this basket offering to high ground, where she should offer prayers and light candles. Under José’s careful tutelage, Marta
complied with all the requirements, trussing her porcelain statue of San Antonio and locking him in her cupboard. Then, accompanied
by both Pepe and José, she hiked halfway up the Avila mountain to present her offering to El Niño. When they returned to her
apartment in La Florida, it was dusk, but even in the dim light she could make out the figures of the policeman and her two
boys, standing by the entrance to the building. “They were playing poker with a drunk in the back of a bar,” said the policeman.

“Why didn’t you answer when so many were calling out for you?” Marta shouted, while the boys hung their heads and stared at
the ground.

“They had lost their watches in the game, and were afraid to come out until they had won them back,” said the policeman.

Marta thanked the policeman, knelt down, and drew the boys into her arms, burying her face in their hair. “Never do that again,”
she said. Then she raised her hand and whacked them, one after the other, on their cheeks, which turned strawberry red with
the force of her delivery. Afterward, while Pepe pressed ice packs to the weeping boys’ cheekbones, and José began to prepare
dinner, Marta went to her cupboard, withdrew the statue of San Antonio, gently untied him, and returned him to his rightful
place on the altar in her bedroom. Then she sat on her bed, held her hands to her face, and wept with gratitude. She wept
so long and so hard that by the time she returned to the living room, her nose had taken the shape of a potato, giving her
a cartoonish appearance. Pepe had put on a record by Tito Puente and was dancing wildly with the boys. Marta allowed herself
to be drawn into the middle of their mad gyrations and, with her hands on her hips, twirled and whirled around while José
applauded from the door of the kitchen. By the time dinner was on the table, her nose had returned to its normal size, and
the aromatic scent of José’s famous pasticho set her mouth watering.

The following day, Marta allowed José Naipaul to give her a tattoo of Maria Lionza on her back. Her conversion was complete.
The figures on the altar stand were increased by two: Maria Lionza and El Santo Niño de Atoche. Over the years they would
swell to a battalion.

“Your collection of religious iconography has multiplied tenfold,” observed her husband the last time she saw him. He told
her he had been made the manager of the National Factory of Sanitary Fixtures in the city of La Esmeralda.

“Then I can come home?” she asked.

“Not yet, not yet,” he said. He seemed distracted. And later that night, while he panted and labored over her in yet another
desperate farewell, she prayed to La Virgen de la Caridad to keep him safe.

When she discovered she was pregnant, she hoped the baby would be a girl because she thought a girl would be less likely to
ever become a revolutionary.

Humberto Galano died in prison before Luz was born. He never saw his daughter. It was through her friends in Petare that Marta
received the news that he had been executed as a traitor to the Revolution, several months after the execution occurred. He
had refused to be blindfolded, they said. He died like a man, they said, their voices laden with pride. As though this was
better than living like one.

Six months pregnant, Marta walked to the liquor store down the street. She purchased a case of the cheapest rum and paid a
delivery boy five Bolívares to carry it to her apartment. She drew the frayed curtains of all the windows and proceeded to
get very, very drunk. Night and day, she sat in a chair by the darkened window, rousing herself briefly twice a day when the
boys said they were hungry, reaching into her purse for the amount it would cost to buy two perros caliente at the kiosk next
to the liquor store. This is how José found her after two weeks. Horrified, he packed Marta and the boys into his taxi and
drove full speed to Sorte. Within twenty-four hours, Marta had been successfully weaned off alcohol by a clever Banco, who,
after covering her belly with red cloth to protect the unborn child, prayed over her and forced her to drink rum “blessed
by the Goddess” all day and all night without respite, waking her when she dozed and pouring it down her throat, refilling
her stomach with it when she vomited. Until she had had enough rum to last her lifetime and beyond. It was the second time
Maria Lionza had come to her aid, and she would not forget it. When she returned a few days later, her landlord was threatening
eviction as her rent was over a month overdue. She applied for another housekeeping job and, despite her pregnancy, was hired
by a cousin of President Marcos Perez Jimenez.

Marta was not the sort to tell her problems to people she’d barely met, and she didn’t know what made her tell her new employers
about her predicament with the rent and the pregnancy. But it was the right decision, because they immediately offered to
advance the money. They even paid her hospital bill when she delivered a baby girl, whom she named Luz, a beacon shining out
from the darkness of her loneliness.

The following year, when the rent was suddenly raised exorbitantly, her employers helped her make arrangements to put the
boys in boarding school in Valencia, and invited her, along with the baby, to live with them in their home.

Although she felt appreciated and loved, although her existence and that of her children was secured, although she had a new
country and a new life, she continued to quietly mourn Humberto. Her grief, at first a large, dark cloud that dimmed her senses,
over the years condensed into a small black stone that settled, hidden but never forgotten, in her heart. And she never failed,
once a week, to make an offering to the vengeful spirit of La Negra Primera, petitioning for the painful and humiliating demise
of her husband’s executioner. Sooner or later, her petition would be heard, of that she was convinced. She would continue
praying for that day to come until it did come.

With the ouster of El Colonel, her employer, who had benefitted financially from his blood ties with the president, had fled
to Spain, and she was forced to look for alternate employment. After several days of pounding the pavement, going door-to-door
in the residential areas of the capital and hearing a series of
no thank you
s, she finally sat, exhausted and dejected, at an outdoor table outside the Panadería Sosa, wondering how on earth she was
going to keep her children in boarding school. A woman holding a young girl by the hand, a child no older than Luz, who was
five, approached her tentatively and smiled. “All the tables are taken,” she said. “Would you mind if we joined you?”

“Please do sit down,” said Marta, smiling at the little girl.

“I’m Lily,” said the child. “Don’t you think my name is pretty?”

“It surely is,” said Marta.

“Please allow me to buy you a coffee,” said Consuelo.

An hour later, she had become an integral part of the Martinez household.

Since her daughter married a millionaire, Marta no longer needs to work for anyone. Still, she can’t imagine leaving Lily.
Luz doesn’t see why not. But hadn’t Consuelo and Ismael built a cottage for her in their very own garden, where she had lived
with her family until the boys had joined the military and Luz had married?

“All I’m saying is that you don’t have to
work
for them,” says Luz. “You could live in your own apartment and visit them whenever you like.”

“No. I can’t live in my own apartment. What would I do there?” It isn’t as though Luz is offering to share her own flat and
companionship. And who wants to cook for one?

That enormous penthouse and all that money Luz got from Miguel Rojas, what good has it done her? is what Marta wonders. Luz
doesn’t know that Marta has refused to accept a salary ever since the Quintanillas began having financial trouble, and Marta
doesn’t plan to tell her. Luz gives her far more than she can spend, so where is the need of a salary? In fact, if Marta were
Luz, she’d use the money to help those less fortunate—perhaps doing something for someone else once in a while would put a
smile on her face. But no, she just lounges around, gobbling up chocolates and watching telenovelas half the day. Is she blind
to the way people all over the country are struggling?

Ay, Luz. Perhaps it is as the Banco of Maria Lionza once told her: in her bones, if not her mind, Luz knows that her mother
had cursed her at birth.