They passed it on the way to church, and if, after church, Papá was happy and the sun was out, they went for a stroll along La Rambla. They ambled through a crowd of ambling people, on a cream and maroon sidewalk, gazing at the shore. The water was different every time. Brown, green, calm, chopped. Stretching out to meet the sky. Eva squinted in search of Argentina on the other side of the river, but she saw only an infinitesimal line, sky on one side, water on the other. Yet she knew Argentina was there because she had learned this fact in school. She had also learned that El Río de la Plata was named that because the first Europeans thought it would lead to silver and gold. They were quite disappointed, Señorita Petrillo explained, her eyes roving the room like an eagle’s, sprigs of hair escaping her bun. In fact, though the name stuck, it was not true,
no fue cierto. Cierto. Cierto
. Eva rolled that word in her mouth. Something about the sensuous
ssss
against the palate, followed by the dramatic burst of
ier
, ending with a strong, decisive
to
, enticed her, as though the very taste of it made it worth saying. She would walk that Rambla on Sundays and roll that word under her breath, watching the waves spread onto the sand. The River of Silver had promised something, but it was not true, not
cierto
, like
cierre, cielo, cerrado, siempre:
lock, sky, closed, always. She murmured in time with the waves:
Cierre. Cielo. Cerrado. Siempre
. Lock. Sky. Closed. Always.
They were silly, her word games, and she knew it. She didn’t tell her parents about them. Papá, especially, said she took words too seriously. “There’s more to life than words,” he said, and he should know, having built the house they lived in with bare hands. But Eva loved words for the way they bent and danced around her thoughts, as if her thoughts and words could dance a tango, the thoughts warm and sweating, the words bright and graceful, a rhythm pressed between them. Only Tío Artigas would understand her secret game. He was like a bottle and music was the wine—tangos, folk songs, candombe, anything. She liked to be near him when it poured. Once they made up a tune,
The spider has gone fishing, the bird is flying home, I am bigger than an elephant, but smaller than a gnome
, and he played it over and over for her on his guitar.
Occasionally, at dawn, after Artí had been performing all night long, he sneaked to Eva’s bedside and shook her awake, smelling of cigarettes and that sweet-liquor scent of
grappa miel
. She’d open her eyes to see her uncle’s weathered face, and hear him whisper, “
¡Che! ¿Quieres ir a pescar?
” She always said yes—I want to go fishing, I want to watch the sun get strong over water that shivers in sleep, I want to be still with a rod in my hand and not care if anything bites, I want to sit on a rock with you while light fills up the sky.
Once, on those rocks, Eva did catch a fish, and Xhana gutted it right then and there. She sliced the belly open, pulling organs out with slick and nimble fingers. She skinned it as though the flesh had just been waiting, under scales, for her to free it. She was like that, her cousin; she knew how to grasp a knife, did not fear what was hidden in the body of a fish. She knew so much about knives and songs and the grown-up things musicians spoke of. Xhana had read Marx’s
Das Kapital
by the time she was seven years old. Eva tried to follow suit, but found the book impenetrable, big words strung together in odd ways. Still, she gathered that it had something to do with freedom, and maybe music, and everyone in the whole world having those two things. Artí and Xhana seemed to have them. They lived in Barrio Sur, closer to downtown, on a street with old carved doors that were splintered at the edges, where the buildings pressed together like very close friends. Sometimes they disappeared for a month or two, without warning, to Brazil or Paraguay or the Andes. They returned with stories, mosquito bites, holes in their clothes, a photograph of Xhana with her abuelo João, painted drums and
quena
flutes and lessons on how to play them.
Such a life could not hope for universal approval. Coco Descalzo, the butcher’s wife, clucked her tongue each time she heard news of Artigas’ departure. “There he goes,” she said and slapped a stack of sausages. “Wandering dangerous roads with that poor girl. She needs a decent home, a stable home.
¡Qué barbaridad!
”
“
Sí
, Coco.” Mamá’s black braids swung close to the meat. “But he’s not going to change.”
“Why should he?” Clarabel Ortiz, La Divorciada, stood in the door, hat in hand. The hat was festooned with crumpled paper flowers. Even
Eva knew that Clarabel held an unrequited passion for Artigas. “Just think of the adventures they must have. Xhana’s lucky to see the world!”
“Yes, yes,” Coco said. “
Buenos días
to you too. We all know what you think and how you’d like to”—her face alight, she glanced at Pajarita, then at Eva attentive in the corner—“
este
”—sighing—“travel. Sausage? It’s fresh as can be.”
“No, thank you.” Clarabel plucked a fake petal from her hat. “I’ve come to consult with Pajarita.”
Mamá and Clarabel crossed the leather curtain behind the counter. Eva followed. She agreed; Xhana was lucky. Who cared that their apartment was small? That two of its windows were broken? On the road, the whole world could be their home, the world with all its dust and flutes and secrets. Eva wanted to see the world too, and so she’d become a pirate in her games with Andrés Descalzo. He was older than she was, by three whole years, but they’d played in the back of the butcher shop since her earliest memory. He had a quick and sparkling mind and together they sailed the seas. Long slabs of ribs, hung from meat hooks, became the sails of their ship. They quested and swung their swords and found treasure in holes they dug in the floor with imaginary spades. Their friendship had evolved out of minor exiles: Andrés was not allowed into his older sisters’ elite world of dolls and teacups, and Eva could not join her brothers’ knee-scraping bouts of soccer. In exacerbation of these matters, Andrés did not do well with soccer, and Eva was bored by serving empty cups of tea. It was far better to board a ship and explore the oceanic wilderness in all its unbridled perils with Andrés, the captain, who wore an eye patch made of brown wrapping paper colored with black pencil (“that thing will give you headaches,” his mother said, but each time she tore one up he made another). Eva, the first mate, had an amazing nose, known across the seas for sniffing beneath the smell of cow flesh for the scent of gold and rubies. Andrés navigated. While Eva kept her nose on precious metals, he kept his uncovered eye out for danger. There were plenty of dangers: crocodiles, dragons, waves big as houses, mean ships full of nasty men who wielded long knives, sharp rocks, mad mermaids, sorcerers with moldy teeth. Andrés steered through it all, toward the lands where treasure lay, waiting to be exhumed and
brought to light. That was the best part: the sifting, the finding, the poring over extraordinary jewels—a sapphire ring that made you fly; necklaces that heard the whispered secrets of the heart; bracelets made of bright, delicious candy that could be licked and licked and never get spent, never whittle away, because they were made of
Oro Dulce
, Sweet Gold, which, for fearless pirates, was the prize.
Eva watched her mother and Clarabel settle onto stools. Clarabel was crying already. Eva looked up at the red haunches that hung from the ceiling, the bloody chopping block, the ready knives. When she grew up, she’d be a pirate. She would seek strange and fabulous lands, dig up treasure, and bring it all the way home to Punta Carretas. Mami would be laden with more gold than she could wear. And everyone in Montevideo would gather in the plaza and say look! look! see what Eva Firielli has brought home. And there would be a big party with toasts and streamers and Tío Artigas would play and Mamá and Papá would dance and she would wear a huge magnolia behind her ear the whole night long.
Or maybe Papá wouldn’t dance. Papá, after all, could not be predicted. He was like a planet, with atmosphere and gravity all its own. Eva knew about planets and gravity and atmosphere from Señorita Petrillo. She knew that every planet has its own kind of air draped around it, and that every planet pulls things close in its own way. Her brothers seemed to understand this too; they orbited her father like three vigorous moons, Bruno, Marco, Tomás, sidling up to the moody air around her father in a cloud of boyish noise until they blended with one another, Brunomarcotomás. Her mamá called them from the street that way.
¡Brunomarcotomás!
Their presence was instinctive, constant, like breathing. They were always there and yet their club was closed to her, along with its coded ways: the sprint behind a soccer ball, trail of sweat behind them, loud ease around the planet of her father. That planet’s weather changed often. One day it glistened, moist with rum; the next day your skin could crack from its aridity. On dry days it was best to let him sit, undisturbed, in his rocking chair that creaked back and forth. On the wet
days there was banter, the glad gauze of cigar smoke, magic tricks performed for Eva’s bright staccato applause, poker games with Brunomarcotomás, played with seashells as their betting chips (no money gambling in the house—this rule Mamá enforced with steely will), or another game that called for throwing cow vertebrae with stones, a real gaucho game because, as Cacho, the magician, once proclaimed, “Your Papi is a real
uruguayo
.” The real
uruguayo
game filled the living room with bellow-laughs on those good nights. The laughter careened into the kitchen, where Mamá washed dishes and Eva dried and stacked. In every corner of the kitchen, plants mixed their sweet-leaf breaths with the air and the calm and the full-bellow laughter. We are rising, they murmured in their green way. We are rising into all this kitchen air.
Mamá had her own way of navigating Papá’s planet. When Eva was nine years old, Papá began taking Brunomarcotomás to a place called El Corriente. Mamá drew out all her weapons. First came logic. “
por
Dios
, they’re still children! What kind of example does this set?” Then came memory. “Have you forgotten? Have you?” Finally, and most brutally, came silence. Eva watched her mother turn her father into the Incredible Disappearing Husband. Now He’s Here, Now He’s Not. Now the man of the house does not exist. There—Ta Da!—is a Ghost Eating Toast in the Morning. Mamá boiled water for a phantom’s morning
mate
, placed the gourd on a table where no one sat.
“
Querida,
” no one said.
Mamá said nothing, as there was no thing to answer.
“
Por favor …
” There was no man here, saying words that dissolved into colluding air.
After nineteen days, the Man That Does Not Exist broke down and sobbed into his gourd. This gave him flesh again. Papá returned to the table, opaque and fully formed, and from then on Brunomarcotomás—to their dismay—stayed home.
One summer night Papá did not come home. Eva sat in the kitchen, subtracting fractions, while Mamá scrubbed every surface and shifted plant pots late into the night. Forty-seven minutes after midnight, Eva ran out of fractions and drew numbers, over and over, pretending to add, to multiply, to make them into more than what they were. The next
day, Eva returned from school exhausted and collapsed into her bed. When she awoke, her room was dark. There was no moon. A warm figure sat on the bed beside her.
“Psst. Eva.”
“Xhana?”
“
Prima
, I thought you’d never wake up!”
Eva dragged her mind up from the fog of sleep. “Is Papá here?”
“He was. He’s out again. My papá and your mamá are in the kitchen talking.”
“Oh.”
“Did you hear?”
“What?”
“That your father lost his job.”
Eva sat up against the pillows. Air pressed humidly against her. “No.”
“That’s why he’s so upset.”
Eva’s eyes adjusted, a little, to the dark. She saw the barest outlines of Xhana’s face—hairline, eyes, a sweep of nose.
“Do you know why it happened?”
“There’s a problem with our economy.”
“Oh.”
“We have an export economy.”
Eva had heard the word
export
before, to describe the company her father worked for. She had always thought it meant Very Big Crate. “What’s that?”
Xhana switched on the lamp. Eva blinked, eyes gulping in the light. “The thing is,” Xhana said, “we have a lot of sheep and cows. Uruguay, I mean.
¿Ta?
”
“
Ta
.”
“So people export—that means sell things far away. To countries that are richer and who like our wool. And beef. And leather.”
Eva nodded. Xhana had two blue ribbons in her hair. They matched her blouse. They looked so pretty.
“But then these rich countries, they woke up one day not so rich. And said, those
uruguayos
, let’s not buy their things. And then, after that,
uruguayos
don’t have money. And so they tell people not to go to work.”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to?”
“Yes.”
Eva lifted the sheet from her bed. Her cousin sluffed off her shoes and crawled in, blouse and ribbons and all. Sleep rose around them, one dark swath surrounding their two bodies.
The autumn months unfolded coldly. March. April. May. It rained hard. A new sort of silence filled up Eva’s home, and it was not a good or pretty silence, not a fishing-morning silence; this one was sour and sticky and it settled deep between the fibers of the rugs, in the corners of the house, filmy and translucent over chairs and forks and napkins. It was everywhere, silence that could stain your hands and prick the back of your neck. Noise did not expel it. Any word or laugh or song just layered over it for a moment, hovered in the air, then fell apart and landed in flecks on the big silence. Life happened on it and around it and within it: Papá’s absences, and his tense arrivals; his bone-dry brooding and slurred jokes; Brunomarcotomás, banished from soccer by the weather, peeling apart into Bruno (gambling madly for shells), Marco (lost in books), and Tomás (gambling for shells and polishing his father’s forgotten shoes); Mamá, pushing forward like a steady prow, her fist pounding bread crumbs into beef, her braids tight and dark each morning. Mamá kept filling her basket each day with freshly cut leaves and roots for the
carnicería
. Women still came for remedies, though they had less to give in return than before. Eva saw this, watching from her pirate ship, clasping hands with Capitán Andrés of the Invincible Eye Patch. She watched women sit on that stool across the seas, faces strained, hands empty, bodies stooped in the shape of a question mark.