Dominicana, page 22
The lights come back on as the triangle strikes and the horns blare, then the piano and drums kick in. César looks at me with love.
I turn myself away so my backside leans against him. His sex, a pistol. I move away. He pulls me closer. I close my eyes. I want to be naked with him, to love him, to feel his hands between my legs, on my breasts. He rubs against me. The crowd thickens with people dancing. The music swallows us in, embraces us. He holds on to me. When we dance, he stays close, closer than ever before. My insides swell and I kiss him. Suck on his tongue, bite his lips, and I am lost to him.
When the song stops, I peel away, my sex burning, my head dizzy.
César, I need to go to the bathroom.
Ana, wait.
In the bathroom, I wash away the makeup on my cheeks, around my eyes. The lipstick is smeared around my mouth.
What am I doing?
Ana! César calls from outside the door.
One minute! I say.
When I walk out, César rushes to me. He pulls me aside to the hallway near the offices, where it’s quieter.
Forgive me, Ana, he says.
For what? I’m the one who’s going to hell, I say. This is Juan’s baby.
But I love you, César says.
And a hundred others.
All I think of is you, he says, putting his hands in his pockets.
Juan will kill you.
César and I are eating the poisonous fish. And to end it right there, I run down the narrow stairs to the exit.
Wait, Ana. Wait.
Outside, the crowd waits to enter the ballroom. A part of me enjoys giving them a show.
Please, César, I say in a telenovela voice, forget about me. I’ll ruin your life. Please leave.
César slaps his hand flat across his forehead. By then, we’ve entered the lobby.
I’m not a dog. You can’t just tell me to leave.
He follows me across the street, back to our building. He watches me make a fuss of pressing the elevator button and crossing my arms and tracking the light moving across the numbers.
He opens the door of the elevator before I can.
Please go, I say once we’re inside.
César pushes me against the wall. Pins my arms.
Tell me you don’t love me.
I love him. I fucking love him. His mischievous eyes, his firm ass, his muscular legs. The way he says my name with bated breath. There’s no point in lying. We’ve been eating puffer fish all along. I look at his lips until the elevator stops on our floor. I take his hand and he follows me into the apartment. The kitchen light is still on. I’m relieved that Dominicana on my window is looking away from me. César and I go into the bedroom. We don’t turn on any other lights or say another thing. In the dark with the moon as our witness, I pull off his suit jacket, unbutton his shirt. Touch his clavicle. Undo his belt, his pants, and watch them fall on the floor. I pull down his white underwear, bleached by me. His pistol springs up and points at me and for the first time I don’t cringe or look away. I stare at it. Grab it. I want it inside of me. I turn around for him to unzip my dress. To undo my bra. My underwear. All off. All on the floor. When we face each other, naked like newborns, he grabs my belly, round and hard. He traces the dark thin line that runs from my belly button to my nest. His fingers tangle in my pubic hair.
You’re so fucking beautiful, he says, and I press his hand and push his fingers inside of me. He gasps into my ear, his curls tickling my face. My nipples harden. He turns me around so that his sex rubs between my legs. He folds me over onto the bed. His chest close to my back. His lips on my neck, on my shoulders. His hands dig into me. I grab him and push him inside me. I don’t care if I die right there. I want him to thrust inside of me forever. Let this be our last day. Let us die right here.
When the sun comes up we’re still naked in bed. On Juan’s bed. Our bodies are sticky from the heat, from our sweat. From everything. I look at César on his back, his arms above his head, his legs flopped open, his penis small and scrunched like a tamarind. When I stand to put on some clothes, to make coffee, he pulls me in, and in seconds he’s hard again. But now it’s daytime. Now the light is on us.
Let me make us some coffee, I say. I need to brush my teeth. Wash my face, streaked from the tears and the remaining makeup. Put on some clothes. Recollect myself. My hair from the humidity is shaped like a starfish.
Don’t leave me.
I’ll be back, I promise.
I cover my body with the sheet and walk out.
While the coffee percolates and the milk warms, my mind races with regret. Juan will be back in two days. Mamá is right. I have been struck by the devil who stole all reason. Love, love, love. What good is it, if it can’t put food on the table. Women have to be pragmatic. We had a plan. Cement blocks are already piled high on Papá’s property. Teresa may have ruined her life with El Guardia, but I ruined our family’s future with my brother-in-law. Why couldn’t César have been a stranger, someone I can eventually hide away who won’t complicate everything? The coffee comes up. The milk boils over.
Ana! César calls from the bedroom as if he always slept in that room. As if we have always been lovers. And I think about Juan calling, Cari! from Caridad’s bed as if it does not belong to her husband. So this is how it happens. This is how.
I carry two cups of café con leche to the room. César, still naked and hard. He’s like a teenager after all. His smile from ear to ear. He lights a cigarette and his eyes are full of desire. Not like Gabriel’s desire, never acted on. César has a man’s desire, the insatiable desire of one who has tasted victory.
I’ve been thinking, César says, sipping his coffee, smoking. He sits up, props some pillows behind him, extends his legs and crosses them at the ankles. I sit at the opposite corner, on the edge. Drink my coffee nervously, thinking, two days. Two days!
But César doesn’t seem to care. As if I’m like any other married woman he’s been with.
So I have a friend who moved to Boston.
Again with the Boston. It’s always Boston.
She opened her own dry cleaner and she needs a tailor. She asked me if I wanted to move over there. It’s only three hours away. She has a house with a yard, like Hector; real nice, white fences, a garage. She told me I can rent the apartment on top of her garage and start working with her. Be like a partner.
So this is his plan, to leave New York for Boston? He talks, but I only hear the police sirens outside the window.
What do you think?
I fight myself not to throw the cup of coffee into his face.
Ana? He waves his hands in front of me.
We should get dressed, I say. There’s a lot to do before Juan arrives.
I turn my back away from him.
Don’t you want to come with me to Boston? César asks.
He reaches for me, both his hands on my shoulders. In the mirror I see Us. Our hair rebelling, our skin darker from all the hours we’ve spent sitting in the sun. It’s the first time I ever saw us together so bare.
Go with you? The words really land.
Of course, silly.
He climbs around and gets on his knees. His eyes look up at me. His hands fold on my belly.
Let me take care of you and the baby. We can start over in Boston. You can make your food and sell it. I can do tailoring.
Juan will never forgive you. He may even kill you.
I’m willing to take that chance.
And my mother? My father? We can’t just leave. They’re counting on me.
People do it all the time. They leave for less important reasons than this. I love you, Ana. And you love me. And I don’t care if no one in my family ever talks to me again, I want to be with you. We can’t go back now and pretend nothing happened. We can’t. Please say yes.
I’ve trained all my life. Pretend, pretend, pretend. Pretend the whippings didn’t hurt. Pretend I was listening. Pretend to care about the stories Juan told me and that I loved him. Pretend that I was happy about leaving my house in Los Guayacanes.
To hell with pretending. Yes, I say. Yes.
PART VI
Juan arrives from Santo Domingo. And when he arrives to the apartment Juan’s already tipsy from the flask Hector carries in his pocket. They bust into the apartment with Juan’s luggage and bags full of Dominican foods wrapped in gift paper.
Look at you, he says, and slaps my face softly a few times. I have a surprise for you.
I keep moving about, trying to piece together a meal for three.
What surprise?
Your mother and Lenny will soon have a visa. They may be able to come even before the baby is born.
What?
Isn’t that what you wanted? Juan says.
What I wanted is already happening. César is preparing an apartment for us. He’s stocking up the fridge. He’s looking into playgrounds and daycares. He’s looking for a school where I can study, and a job flexible enough so I can care for the baby. He is planning to wait two months, until the baby is born. Then we will run away together.
Where’s César? Juan asks, looking around.
Hector explains that César has gone to Boston for a job because that’s what the Ruiz brothers do. When there’s an opportunity to make money, they chase after it. I close my eyes and appeal to César for guidance, for protection, for an answer. But rather than face Juan with me, he went off to Boston, to outer space with a jet pack.
Doesn’t the news about your mother make you happy? Juan’s sausage fingers massage my neck.
Of course. I’m happy. I’m shocked.
The phone rings. I let out a deep breath.
He picks it up and says a few words, quickly hangs up as if he can’t be bothered. His eyes turn back to mine as if he can reach into my heart.
The brothers take over the house like wild boars. The hard plastic suitcases pop open, are gutted of their contents. Juan pulls out a bottle of rum wrapped in netting.
Barceló Añejo, the good stuff!
I purse my lips and hold back from crying. I should’ve taken all the money I made and left with César on the bus at Penn Station. The bus would have dropped us off in Boston by a supermarket, where his friend would’ve picked us up and driven us to the small apartment on top of the garage attached to her house.
Ana, says Juan, get us some glasses.
He pats my behind, pushing me toward the kitchen, his hands looser but less aggressive than I remember them.
I disappear into the kitchen with the rum bottle in hand, in search of calm, in search of order. I open the cabinet doors to find a neat line of glasses, one behind the other, as if on display at a store. I place two stubby glasses on a wooden tray, and another one for myself.
I pour the rum into all three glasses, over ice. I gulp one before I leave the kitchen. Swallow hard. I place the tray on the coffee table, keep my back to them and look out the window to reliable Broadway, to the people on their clocks, coming and going. The same people who stand at the bus stop. The same people who enter and exit the Audubon Ballroom, crossing paths.
Can it be? Mamá and Lenny are coming to New York?
The sharp burn of the rum lingers on my tongue and throat. The warmth of it fills my head.
Ana, sit by me, Juan says, pushing Hector away to the end of the sofa to make space for me. Juan’s voice tinged with laughter, so clueless of how I have changed, so clueless of my betrayal. It makes me feel sorry for him.
How was your trip? I ask just to say something.
Smooth. Forgot I was on the plane most of the time.
The last time I flew on a plane I threw up twice, Hector says, because the pilot bounced the plane like a rabbit.
The men laugh as Hector jumps up and down in the living room. His heavy body shakes the wooden floors and I want Mr. O’Brien to complain with his broomstick.
Juan’s hand lands on my lap like a brick.
Let me check on the food, I say, and slip from under him.
What I would give to hear César’s voice.
Juan follows me into the kitchen.
Can I help you with anything?
This is a first. Now I have to pretend.
I need the big plate on the top shelf.
He climbs on a stool, gives me the plate. Stands behind me. The narrow kitchen locks us in. My large belly presses against the sink with Juan against me. His hands circle both my breasts.
They’re huge.
He squeezes hard. It hurts, but I stand still and say nothing as his hands drop to the globe I carry, hard and full. He nibbles on my neck, catching me by surprise.
I cringe. Maybe it’s a mistake to wait until the baby is born to leave.
Juan, this kitchen’s too small and hot for three people. Go entertain your brother.
Oh, how I missed you both, pajarita, he says.
I serve the food at the table in the living room and watch them eat from the threshold of the kitchen. Though I’m hungry, I never eat when people are over—only with Marisela, only with César.
The phone rings. I pick up. Silence on the other end.
Caridad? I know it’s you, I say, surprised at my own voice.
I hold the earpiece for a long minute, hang up, and lean in toward the living room.
That was for you, Juan.
Juan wipes his mouth for a final time with a napkin and pokes his head into the kitchen while I busy myself clearing dirty pots from the counter.
I have to take care of something. But don’t worry, I’ll be back later, he says to me, then turns to Hector. Hey, gimme a ride?
Of course.
Hector hovers by the door waiting for Juan, who pulls a small package from the suitcase and tucks it into his jacket pocket.
Did you bring me any letters? I call out to Juan before they leave the apartment.
Look in the suitcase, he says, and as if he’d forgotten something, he turns to me, picks me up, and hugs me.
Stay out of trouble, pajarita. I’ll be back before the moon. And remember, you’re all that matters.
Then they are gone. And I am able to breathe. I turn off the music. I close all the windows to block out the street noise, yearning for silence.
I scrape the dishes and soak them in soapy water. The phone rings again. I hope for my mother but know it’s Caridad.
Aló. I hold the earpiece with my shoulder, continue to wash the dishes, and wait for something, anything.
He left. To see you, I say.
The other end silence, not even a breath.
Say something, you coward! I say and throw a dish on the floor.
I sweep the glass, shovel the broken dish into a dustpan, and toss it in the garbage. Wash the dishes and wipe the stove. Take Juan’s clothes and hang them in the closet, place them in the drawer. The dirty ones I stuff in the hamper in the bathroom. I take out the bags of mentas from my mother and the four letters tightly wrapped with twine inside a thin plastic bag. First, I will finish cleaning. Then read. Something about the letters makes me nervous. I pile the packages, favors for Juan’s friends with names I’ve never heard of, on the shelves. When all of Juan’s things inside the suitcase find a place, I stare at the two empty suitcases, their open mouths begging me to take them back to Dominican Republic.
Maybe I can leave to Boston before Juan comes back. Send a message to César that I’m on my way so he picks me up at the station. It will take Juan and Caridad three, maybe four hours to make up for lost time. Plus the time of the bus ride to Boston, about four hours. But how do I reach César?
I manically open the drawers and stuff clothing inside of a bag. I can go to one of those places on the pamphlet the doctor had given me, the one with the map that Juan crumpled up and threw away but that I later retrieved from the garbage and hid in a drawer. Red dots signaling safe spaces. But then what?
Because cleaning helps me think, I wring out all of the washed laundry from the bathtub, tie a clothesline from the entrance door hinge to the closet door hinge, across the living room, hang the clothes to dry. I bathe. I shave my legs and armpits. I wash my hair and wrap small sections with rollers. What if I just chop it all off? Then Juan will kill me for sure.
Because I can’t leave the apartment with wet hair, I balance the hair dryer on the spine of the sofa and sit under it. It’ll take at least forty minutes. Meanwhile, I can make a plan.
I take the letters from my family and hold them on my lap. One from Yohnny—Yohnny? I drop the letter as if a ghost had written it and place it behind all the others.
I sink deeper into the sofa, maneuvering my head under the hair dryer so the heat doesn’t burn my cheeks and the tops of my ears. I open the first letter from my mother. No, How are you? No, How’s the baby? It starts with, Now that I’ve applied for a travel visa you should start looking for a job for me. Lenny will accompany her because he’s proven to be incapable of doing anything on his own but read the paper to Papá when he’s too tired to read it for himself. And add numbers. She calls him a walking calculator. Just like you. So in exchange for the price of two plane tickets Papá gave Juan another large piece of land.
I put down the letter. My heart aches. What is a man like Papá without land?
Papá’s letter is written on a small piece of notebook paper, in pencil. It’s the second one I’ve received from him since my arrival. Like his first letter, he starts with I don’t want to bother. I don’t like to ask for anything. He then says: You have to take care of your mother now. Take care of Lenny. I handed Lenny a wrench and he nearly cut off a finger.
The letter ends with, Juan is a good man.
He’s clearly given up. He too is pretending.
I study Papá’s childlike handwriting. He went to school maybe two or three years at most. Yes, Papá, a good man pays the rent, provides for his family, works hard. A good man keeps his word. He cheats on his wife. He almost chokes her to death. He punches, slaps, trips, hurts her. Yes, Papá, Juan is a good man.
How will Mamá and Lenny live with me and César on top of a garage in the one-room apartment in Boston? Mamá will never allow it. Her allegiance is to Juan. Our land’s future is tied to Juan. And soon, Papá will have to come to New York because he can’t stay there alone. And what about Teresa and poor Juanita and Betty?
