Teresa’s door is open. From the threshold I watch her sleep, mouth agape, in the dim illumination of the nightlight she insists on. Because, she says, there are things under the bed that crawl out in the dark.
Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat,
Roberto taunted once. She hid her face, soft dark hair falling over it in shame. Jack rescued her that day, saying,
Shut up, asshole. There’s no law against being scared, you know,
and flicked his thumb against Roberto’s ear. A painful snap.
*
Faint pools of light glow against the base of the stairs. Plastic crackles, the refrigerator door booms shut.
At the kitchen table Jack’s piling tuna fish on slabs of bread. Chocolate-chip cookies are heaped in the bowl before him. Standing there, he sways slightly like a bear on scent, sucks mayonnaise from a fork and blinks in surprise.
I wave, “Hungry?”
“Yeah. Want some?”
“No thanks.”
My son’s face is changing. A serious, handsome face, ridged by black curling hair and thick brows. He’s begun to shave sometimes. And at sixteen he’s as tall, now, as Babe. But while she’s taken after my side of the family and is naturally muscular, solidly built, Jack has taken after Barbara’s and is slender, all legs and elbows, big feet planted firmly on the ground.
Hot breeze comes through the screens. He gives me his look of pity, the one that says:
You’ve been pretty jumpy lately, old man.
It’s true. Up at night a lot, dreamy-eyed and far away from them all at breakfast.
“Any idea where your sister went?”
I try to make this sound casual. Watching the wary expression that lights his eyes, I know I’ve failed.
“Babe?”
“On second thought, I’ll take one of those cookies. You didn’t hear her go out this morning, did you?”
“Here.” Jack straddles a chair, shoves the bowl across the table. I sit too.
“Did you?”
“Nah.” I know he’s in on whatever the plot is, covering for her. But he smiles openly, shamelessly. “What’s the matter, Dad, couldn’t sleep? You want some of this sandwich?”
“Not really.”
“Well, you ought to try and turn in. I’ll bet she gets back soon.”
From where? I ask silently. He acknowledges it silently, too, covers up by munching bread crumbs through his grin. A good boy, Jack, good soldier in the war between generations. We sit and I watch him eat for a while. Then I must admit defeat, cuff him gently on the shoulder and turn to go upstairs, saying You get some sleep too,
señor.
But the clock doesn’t leave me alone. I listen. Soft wooden ticking. Twelve forty-five. Water runs in the bathroom, the sink, toilet, fluorescent shafts stripe the hallway carpet then disappear. At the door to the master bedroom the nerves seize me again, invisible insects crawl around the inner walls of my stomach and no, no, I can’t go in there just yet.
*
They said You must expect some emotional problems, Mr. Delgado. Any survivor of a disaster like this is bound to suffer psychologically. A certain amount of anger is not unusual. Yes, and a great deal of suppressed pain. We call it a post-traumatic disorder. It precedes the period of mourning.
I wanted to ask many question then. How long would it last, this disorder? And what can it possibly mean to mourn when there are no tangible symbols left to speak of your loss—no coffins, no urns of ash, nothing to mark the extent of grief, to ritualize it—no powerful healing words to chant to yourself?
In the hospital room those first few days her eyes were swollen shut, big, like the scarred halves of ruined Ping-Pong balls. I wanted to cry. To pluck out my own eyes and give them to her. I sat in waiting rooms wishing more than anything else that I could trade places with my child. It would have been so much easier.
*
* *
To sacrifice.
What Tia Corazón said when, as a final act, I brought Babe there. Telling Barbara I was taking her to a highly regarded nutritionist in Florida. Because she would eat nothing at first, starved herself down to skin and bone, and the doctors were threatening to put her back on an IV. We had tried everything. Special food supplements, vitamins in megadoses, various foul liquid protein mashes made in blenders. More internists. A hospital social worker. Until, in desperation, I took her to Miami.
Tia Corazón. Remembering, I can feel myself flush with a kind of shame.
But who is to say that
that,
after all, was not the thing to turn the tide? Isn’t it true that she began to eat again shortly afterward? So maybe we have that mad old witch to thank, Tia Corazón with her candles, her powders, her incantations and her spirits—because, yes, my child began to eat again. And lived.
Sacrifice. Felipe, how much do you want her life, and how much the treasure she wins? Pick up this card and look. Crown of the heart or of world kings,
muy señor mio,
you’ll have to choose. Sacrifice. Your house disappears like wind.
Bastante.
Excess of the body. She’s trying to turn into air now. For sacrifice. Take the egg in your hand, my child, it’s enough struggle. Eat. Eat. Drive out the death in your heart, and eat.
She lit candles, eyes rolled up into her head, the feathers spread across my daughter’s chest sprayed with warm red droplets. Calling on the Seven Powers.
That mad old witch.
I stared into candle flames and saw them: the hearts for sacrifice, raw, soaked with life. Smoke singed tears from my eyes. They ran down onto my fingers, and when I held the fingers up against flame and shadow the drops were thick crimson, staining my face and hands. Then the thick dark stain turned to gold in front of me, burned pure and clear by the shimmering, flickering light.
*
It’s what I’ve waited to hear: hum of a car, methodical crunch of a garage door closing. Rubber soles on cement. Then the sure scrape of keys against a doorknob, driveway lights switched off, and I am already down the stairs.
She sits on the living room sofa with a single lamp on. Ankle on knee, arms stretched wide, easily, she looks relaxed and then sees me and starts a little, flashing a tense smile.
“Hi.”
“Went for a drive today?”
“I had some things to do.” In the lamplight her face looks colorless, bloated.
Beneath this pale puffiness the face is young, big tired eyes and a child’s lips. When I sit opposite her the eyes shift anxiously. I wiggle bare toes against my carpet. Look down and for a second find them very ugly, misshapen and unfamiliar, as if they’re monstrous digits belonging to someone else. My words sound lame.
“Rough day?”
“I don’t know. I drove up to see this coach at State.”
Calmate.
Not too many questions. They said it at the hospital,
Let her lead the way, do not force anything, express your interest but above all do not pry,
and I wanted to ask how would it be possible to achieve all these attitudes simultaneously? but in the end was embarrassed to say it.
Now I say instead, very cautiously, “I didn’t know you were in touch with anyone—I mean, anyone like that.”
“I applied late. A little while ago. I had to get some records and stuff—and I had to have some things sent. There was this mess with papers, sort of, because I still have more than two years of eligibility left.”
Postage, application fees, letters requesting recommendations and records—I’d have been glad to help her. But she has done it herself without asking anybody else and now, though afraid in some way I expected to be, resentful in another way I did not think I could be, I am also proud.
“You know,” I breathe, “you don’t have to—”
“Brenna Allen—she’s got a pretty good program there. It’s Division Two. But she said they’d get some money—”
“You know you don’t have to worry about the money. You know it doesn’t matter to me—I can take care of it all.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have to.”
I watch her eyes in the dim light, a kind of sorrow grips them until they meet mine, large, dark, hurting.
“I mean that you don’t have to compete if you don’t want to. Or even swim any more. That’s not important to me.”
“I know, Dad.” She leans forward, natural and calm for a moment. “Look, let’s just see. I don’t have any idea how things will be with me, really. I don’t even know
what
I want these days, to tell you the truth. But I liked her—the coach up there—I liked her a lot. And if I—I’ll probably—well, I mean, let’s just see.”
Okay, I say. Okay,
señorita.
We are silent.
The tears I have in me never fall any more, I don’t know why. Ever since the visit to Tia Corazón. As if I let them all out there and the conduits are now permanently closed, sealed by unspeakable things. I want to cross the carpet between us and hug her close, stroke her hair the way I do Teresa’s and tell her everything will be all right, that I myself will see to it, will watch over her, protect her. But she’s pulled back already, settling firmly against the sofa. There is this unhealed part of her gazing out warily. It’s always been there in her, anyway—the part that comes from Barbara: a silent, austere pride that makes you careful of handling her casually, or of touching her at all.
And who is to say that this steely untouchable side of my daughter is not, in some way, her greatest asset? Maybe it’s that, only that, which pulled her through alive. You, Delgado, you pride yourself on your ability to embrace both these aspects of your family—the love of what is lavish and romantic coupled with the need for discipline, regulation, order—but can you say that in the end it is always love that pulls you through? Maybe survival has nothing to do with love. Maybe, sometimes, it is merely a matter of sheer will, will pitted against even your own desire to stop, to die. Even if your desperate Cuban witchcraft were conclusively proven to work. Mechanisms of ritual, of love. Bah humbug. No. You don’t really know her
so
well, Delgado. You really don’t know this daughter of yours.
“Babe, listen. Your mother and I—we want you to be happy. That’s all.”
Such bullshit, Delgado. What is it now that stops you from saying what in your heart you want to say?
I
love you. I am proud of you. I would take the pain away from you, if only I could.
There. What stops you?
The fact that these expressions of caring would be too much. I’m supposed to go easy on her. No pressure, the doctors all said that. No pressure. Not even the pressure of knowing how much I care. She’ll assume it as another burden. Something else to carry, along with the weight of a team of dead souls.
“Don’t tell Mom.”
I give her a questioning look.
“I mean, I’ll tell her myself. Tomorrow. That’s what I mean—okay?”
It sounds a little desperate. I nod. Okay, I tell her, whatever you say.
We sit a while, not speaking. My feet worship the carpet-thick Belgian wool. Mahogany-paneled walls. A house where everything has been tastefully done in materials of the highest quality and where, more often than not, cost has not been a consideration. Proof of the times my money purchased fulfillment—for Barbara and me, yes, but more importantly for my children. Handing over all those American dollars blithely, easily, for uniforms and fees. The trips Babe has taken: to Texas, Mission Viejo, Toronto; plane fares, club dues. I whistled while signing checks, pulling credit cards from my wallet, proud, fiercely proud, that after the life I had come from I could provide all these things for my children, my beautiful, protected, talented children. Because I remembered how in the end my own father could not—not in the blinding heat of Havana streets, resources dwindling daily while we waited at the tips of bayonets. I promised myself then that when I was a man myself I would have as many children as possible and a big house to put them in. That, somehow, I would seal them there and keep them safe. So they would never suffer the agony of the world. This I promised. Now, running naked soles over the lush carpet, I know I’ve failed.
“Are you all right, Babe?”
I wish I hadn’t said it. But stern pride rushes over her again, protecting us both.
Sure,
she tells me,
I’m okay.
Then my hands slap the chair arms with a cheerful finality I do not feel. Well, I say, time for bed, eh?
“You go ahead, Dad. I think I’ll stay up awhile.”
“Still thinking things over?”
“Yes, sure. Don’t
worry
about me. I’m all right, you know.”
I nod apologetically. Yes, I mumble, I know, Babe, I know. As if I am the child and she the parent, and I’ve been caught after bedtime with the lights on and quietly scolded. As if I’ve never grown up, after all. I stand to clumsily kiss her forehead. Her skin is cool in spite of the heat, slightly damp. Damp clings to my lips as I head upstairs.
*
Sacrifice. It begins.
With the house, she said. Wind tears through it, blowing wood from the walls. Look at these patterns. There, your house, land of treasures, honors, the world. Cold as the bones that flesh hangs on. Here, the sacred heart. Burning. Heart of fire, of light. In between, the clock. It keeps you chained to both worlds. Call the Powers—they’ll set her free. And you, too. But the price is great. Choose, Felipe. Flesh, or the walls?
Now calm your tears. They’re here—the Powers. To hurt and to heal you. Look.
One pointed magenta fingernail spanned the sparkling trail of altar powders. In candlelight thick red tears dripped down, clung damply to my lips.