LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

tip of his pocketknife into his palm.

      “Pal carajo,” he muttered, then began to suck at the blood.

      “They’ve picked up hundreds,” Angel said, “not counting the ones who drowned.”

      Again, Daysy thought of Abuelo’s story. Outside, the wind whistled through the screen mesh of the sliding glass door. Daysy felt her breath quickening, and her nose, stuffy from a slight cold, whistled along with the wind, sound mimicking sound. What if it’s true, she thought. After all, Daysy had no clear memory of her life in Cuba, nothing substantial at all to hold onto. She only remembered images here and there, like a quilt made of scraps.

      “It’s been thirty years,” Angel said at the television, as if he were uttering a malediction that would travel through the electrical wires, speed underground and undersea, and kill Fidel in his sleep. “Thirty years!”

      Then Daysy said a thing she didn’t mean to and that she didn’t really believe. It escaped her lips without permission, having erupted from that place in her that raged against her mother’s imperatives, that vibrated with anger whenever they were asked to stand in size order, arms’ distance at school, that threatened to explode whenever her mother stuck a piece of food into her mouth during dinner when she wasn’t looking. Later, she would convince herself that she’d been trying to get the story of Belén out of her mind.

      “Get over it.”

      The moment she said it, Daysy wished it back.

      “Coño,” Angel cursed quietly. “Coño.” And in that word Angel had expressed the vast sadness he felt with such eloquence that Daysy felt her eyes sting.

      “I’m so sorry, Papi. I didn’t mean it.”

      “You meant it. You did.” Angel turned off the television. The house felt abandoned without the noise, though the wind outside howled. Daysy could see that the blood was still raging in her father’s veins. His cheeks were red, and his bad eye had twisted toward the ceiling, as if in imploration. “What if I asked you to say goodbye to your mother? Right now. Goodbye para siempre.”

      There were times in the past, when she was younger, that Daysy had imagined life without her mother, and the thought had constricted her chest, had coiled around her body like a python, and so she always shook off the idea as quickly as she could. When she thought about it now, about life without either one of them, Daysy found that the python had lost its strength, that the idea hurt, but not with the same urgency, the same sense of panic as before.

      “I…I, no sé.”

      “Ah, no sabes. That’s a luxury.” Angel left the room, but Daysy stayed on the cool tile, her scalp burning, her throat tight. She hid her face in her arms, knew it was guilt that drove her to do it, and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

      “Don’t do that. It’s disgusting,” Magda Elena said from the entrance of the living room. She’d brought a cup of coffee for Abuelo, who finished licking the tiny wound on his hand, then sipped at the hot, sugary drink. Daysy, her face still hidden in her arms, heard her mother drop into the chair beside her. “Did I ever tell you about the time I got sick with la fiebre del caballo?”

      “What’s that?” Daysy muttered from underneath her arms.

      “Like meningitis. Y bueno, I thought I was dying. And your Papi, so galante, picked me up and took me down two flights to where a doctor lived. He knocked on the door, and I remember this as clear as crystal, he told that doctor, ‘Doctor, save my wife,’ just like that. And you know what that desgraciado said? He said, ‘You missed the meeting, compañero,’ and fuacatá, he closed the door on us.” Magda Elena brushed her hands against one another, as if the memory had left behind its dusty remnants. “I’ll never forget it. Committee four, zone twenty-five. That was our neighborhood watch group, where those gossipy comunistas got together to talk about who bought a puny quarter pound of chicken on the black market, and who called Fidel a comemierda, writing names down in black ink. We skipped meetings all the time. Your father wanted to kill the man, but lucky for all of us, that doctor relented and opened the door. It’s the law there, you know. They have to treat you a las buenas o a las malas. He cured me with an enormous shot to the spine.”

      Magda Elena turned the television back on, and the news was still replaying the scene at sea. They watched while the reporter interviewed one of the Coast Guard.

      “That’s why my back hurts when it rains,” she said, as if there hadn’t been a break in her story at all.

      “It’s a second Mariel,” Angel said, reappearing in the living room, “but worse now. Look at them all.” He seemed himself again. Daysy said nothing, and Magda Elena clucked her tongue.

      “Who can blame them?” Magda Elena put in. “We all saw the wall going down in Berlin. Everyone knows the Soviets are in a panic,” she said, raising the volume on the television. “And now, it’s the Cubans pasando hambre. Hunger makes you do crazy things,” Magda Elena said. Then she turned to Daysy and lightly smacked the top of her head, saying, “And you with your terrible appetite. Those poor balseros are risking their lives for what you throw away.”

      “Quiet,” Angel said. Magda Elena gave up her seat for Angel, and he took it, and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Mira pa’ eso.”

      There was silence among them as the news flashed images of the rafters. The footage was shaky, taken by tourists on the beach. The camera held steady on a young woman with a small, brown dog in her arms, its fur matted and its eyes bloodshot from so many days out in the sun while at sea.

      Daysy’s abdomen rumbled with cramps, and she winced. She began to fiddle with a comic book she’d left on the floor earlier. Batman looked out at her from between the Joker’s legs in a neat trick of perspective, his cowl wrapped around him in the fury of his righteous anger. It seemed to Daysy a stupid thing, suddenly. What could Batman do to help the people on television? The ones who didn’t make it? What did comic book heroes have to do with crossing the ocean in the dark, without a gun or spear to keep the sharks away, without a bed to sleep in, riding on crashing, devastating waves, stomach cramping, no toilet, dark, dark depths beneath a thin raft, babies drowning. Not even Batman, thought Daysy, would know what to do out there.

      She set the comic book down and looked at her parents. How pained they looked, their eyes narrowed in concentration, their brows wrinkled. The del Pozos’ arrival in the United States had been so different from what they were now seeing on television. They had not washed up on Miami Beach, as some were now doing. The Mariel refugees had come in boats, fleets of them bought or rented by Cuban exiles. They’d been processed on the football field of the Orange Bowl, which was large enough to hold the thousands of Cubans who’d arrived. Of her few memories of that time, Daysy recalled a crush of bodies, long lines, touching her father’s injured face with her small fingers.

      As they watched the television, Magda Elena, sitting now on the arm of Angel’s chair, held Daysy’s hand, grinding her knuckles together without noticing. When Daysy finally whispered, “Ow, Mami. Let go,” Magda Elena took hold of Angel’s hand instead. They continued to watch. The flickering light of the television began to give Daysy a headache. Every so often, a flash of lightning would brighten the dim room, startling Daysy.

      The report on the balseros continued, irritating Daysy, who wanted to ask about Belén. She felt a kind of electricity in her chest, like when Iggy Placetas first put his thin hand on her shoulder in line for lunch. Daysy had wanted to press her cheek against it, the fluttering current traveling under her skin pushing her to do it, but she had held back. The urge to ask about Belén was just as insistent now. How easy would it be to say, casually, the way one talks about a lightning storm, “Hey, Abuelo said the craziest thing the other day.” And yet, Daysy could not bring herself to do it.

      She felt herself grow nervous, and so Daysy blurted out, “Hey, you know Marisel?” instead. No answer from her parents. “Marisel? My best friend? Well, she is going with Julio Alvarez.”

      “Going where, mi’jita?” Angel asked, his attention diverted from the news at last.

Скачать книгу