Beyond the Ties of Blood (45 page)

The next morning broke cool and clear. Eugenia had been up most of the night, and as she stood at the window that looked out on the back patio of the house she could see the burnt tones of early fall spread across the
cordillera
to the east, gathering in the brown wrinkles of the valleys thirsting now for the first winter snows. Laura had been up at irregular intervals during the night. When Eugenia woke during one of her daughter's bouts with dreaming, she placed the pan in the toilet and waited for Laura's next trip to relieve herself. The girl had gone back to sleep again around five and Eugenia had crept into the bathroom, gathering the urine in a clean glass jar and placing it on the kitchen counter, washing and putting away the pan so that nothing looked out of the ordinary. Then she had wondered what to do with the jar sitting in the kitchen, and finally decided to take it out onto the patio and hide it in the corner right under the living room window so that it could not be seen from the house. When she'd come back inside and looked out to make sure it was well hidden, the glow of first light had caught her attention.

She heard movement, then water running off the master bedroom as Sara and Samuel began to stir, then to shower and dress. She wandered into the kitchen to put the coffee on. Samuel came out, as he did every morning, to put the bread he had brought from his bakery into the oven to warm.

“Ah, my dear, you are up early today,” he said, giving her a peck on the cheek.

“Yes,” Eugenia answered, not sure how much Sara had told him. “Laura's alarm is about to go off, so I thought I would get breakfast going.”

By the time they'd finished breakfast and everyone was dressed and ready to go, it was nearly nine o'clock. At the last minute, Sara decided to go with Laura, and this delayed the departure even longer. Complaining that she was going to be late, Laura ushered her grandmother out the door to catch the bus.

Tonia rang the bell an hour and a half later. Eugenia let her in at the gate and took her along the side of the house, directly to the inside patio. “I have the jar out here,” she said.

“It's good you kept it in the shade,” Tonia said, picking it up. “Laurita seemed to be in a decent mood when she got to the office this morning, though I can see what you mean about the circles under her eyes.”

Eugenia nodded. “Do you need anything else?” she asked.

Tonia shook her head. “Do you mind going back inside and waiting for me there? It's easier if I can do this by myself.”

Eugenia headed for the door off the kitchen. “I'll heat up some water for tea,” she said. She saw Tonia lift up the jar, the mid-morning light reflecting through the citron-yellow liquid. Then Tonia took off the top and smelled the contents. After placing the top back on, she put it up to the light again and moved the jar back and forth.

Eugenia had boiled water, prepared and drunk two cups of tea, and put another kettle on the stove by the time Tonia walked in. She looked up, worry lines etched along her mouth.

“That took longer than expected,” she said. The kettle began to boil again. “Do you want a cup of tea?”

Tonia nodded, then emptied the urine into the sink, washing out the jar and the sink before she threw the jar into the garbage pail. Eugenia looked up from the teapot she was filling.

“What are you doing?”

“I've already read it, I know what it says, so I don't need to keep it around anymore.”

“And what did it say?” Eugenia tried to clear her throat.

“The odor was quite strong,” Tonia said. “But I'm not surprised. With all the death there's been in this country, most people's urine smells strong these days. But she's not pregnant, and she's not taking drugs.” Her voice was almost too light.

“Did you see anything else?” Eugenia asked.

“Can I have some tea? Suddenly I feel really hungry. Do you have some bread?”

“
Tía
…”

The older woman ignored her, filling a cup with liquid from the teapot. She stirred in three teaspoons of sugar and took a sip. “The bread?” she asked.

Eugenia took out the remaining pieces of baguette from breakfast and put them on a plate. Then she opened the refrigerator door, took out some butter and jam, and placed all the items on the kitchen table. She brought out two breakfast plates, silverware and paper napkins, and set two places. Then she pulled out two of the chairs, sat in one, and offered the other to Tonia.

“What else did you see?” she asked.

Tonia sat down and began covering a slice of bread with jam. “It's really not that important,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“She's physically healthy, and as I said before, no drugs and no pregnancy. Now, when I moved the urine, it was sluggish and heavy. This is probably her tiredness, and the stress she's been under.”

“It sounds like there's something else.”

“Trust me, it's not important.”

“What do you mean it's not important? Shouldn't I be the judge of that?”

Tonia took another bite of her bread, washed it down with tea, and looked up. When her eyes met Eugenia's, they had turned from honey to a silty shade of olive green.

“Believe me,
m'hijita
, some things are better left alone.”

Eugenia sat up straighter in her chair, staring at Tonia. The older woman looked down again, stirring her tea and bringing the cup to her lips. Then she put the cup back on the saucer and picked up the paper napkin, folding it into thin strips, then unfolding it again. When she put it back down on the table, it looked like a tiny accordion. She refused to look up.

“I can't believe it,” Eugenia said. “You're actually not going to tell me, are you?”

The older woman stood up and took her empty teacup to the sink. She rinsed it out and set it down inside the deep white cavity. “Sometimes,” she breathed, “one moment, one thing said or not said, done or not done, it changes everything. And not always for the better.”

“I can't believe it! You and
doña
Sara, more than ten years now, marching, demanding to know the truth about your children! Now you tell me some things are better left alone? I just don't get it! You must be joking; is this some kind of cruel joke?
Tía
, don't do this!”

Tonia stood looking into the sink for a good long while, almost as if she could find an answer beneath its porcelain surface. When she finally stood up straight and turned back around, her eyes were blazing.

“All right, then,” she hissed. “I guess then you must know. Everybody must know everything now, truth and reconciliation and all that. I told Sara, I said, some of that truth is not going to be good. Truth is that way sometimes. It can hurt more than a lie. But I guess you must know, you insist on knowing it all.

“Her urine is very heavy and sluggish. It doesn't flow normally when I move the bottle, and there are small, dark pieces in it. These pieces tell me there is a man, but the heaviness and darkness say he is not a good man. There is a bad man in Laurita's past.”

“But
tía
, how can that be? There haven't been many men in Laura's life, and they have all been good men—Manuel, Ignacio,
don S
amuel … wait a minute, what about Joaquín?”

“The man's presence in her urine is very large. It couldn't be someone she's only known for a short while. This man has been with her a long time, probably her whole life.”

“That's impossible. Who could it be?”

Tonia came back and sat down at the table. She picked up the accordion napkin and began tearing it into thin strips.

“You know something else you're not telling me,” Eugenia said. “Please,
tía
.”

When Tonia looked up and met her eyes, Eugenia no longer saw any anger in them, but instead an immense sadness. “There is only one possible explanation,” Tonia whispered, “especially when I put it together with the nightmares. Every night Laurita has a visitor. It's her father. But it's not Sara's son. No, it is an evil man, someone who has caused much death. He must have hurt you when you were in jail, and that's why Laura was born. He haunts Laura now, because she has lived a lie. She is not Manuel's child.”

They entered suspended time, an empty place where nothing moved. The silence was so complete that the sounds of daily life began to trickle in through the windows, around the small cracks in the doors, through the curtains still drawn against curious eyes. The whoosh of a car passing on the street. The whistle of a vegetable vendor plying his trade on the sidewalk. A group of boys arguing over where they would play soccer. Even two birds fighting over a crust of stale bread on the patio. Sunny, lively sounds that bounced against the walls and, frightened by what they found, ricocheted out the way they had come in.

“No,” Eugenia finally croaked. “This is the lie. You can't see something like that in urine. How can you say this to me?”

Tonia sat with Eugenia for hours. Her strong hands rubbed along Eugenia's temples, massaging from the crown of her head down to the nape of her neck. Occasionally Eugenia would let out a sigh, sometimes a moan, but mainly she was silent. After Tonia had discovered a particularly tense mass along the side of her neck, Eugenia spoke.

“The math,” she mumbled. “Why is it always the math?”

Tonia sat up a little taller, trying to see Eugenia's face. “What is this math?” she asked.

“All these years. I never did the math.”

“I still don't understand.”

“Laura was born on September 15, 1974.”

“And?”

“And Manuel and I were arrested on October 7, 1973. The times I thought about it, well, between October 7 and September 15 there's more than nine months, but babies are late a lot. That's as far as I ever got. Or ever let myself get.”

“I still don't understand.”

“The problem is,
tía
, the coup was September 11, more than a year before Laura was born. No baby is three months late. Manuel was evicted from his last apartment less than a week before that, and with the small bed in the room we moved to, the horrible tension in the air even before the coup, we never had sex after that. So it was more than a year. You were right,
tía
,” she trembled. “Truth isn't always good.”

“Now it can no longer be good or not good,” Tonia said. “Now it's just truth.”

“But the rape … and
doña
Sara and
don
Samuel. They love Laura so much. She's given them a second chance.
Doña
Sara says she's like Manuel was with his Grandma Myriam and Grandpa David. The bond is closer than with parents, she says. Laura will lose that now, and so will
doña
Sara. And I'll lose them both. What am I going to do?”

“Do they have to know?”

“But you just said that now truth is truth! And besides, the dream. Don't you think that, at some level, Laura must already know? Plus my mother's constant comments about her looks, and how she doesn't resemble Manuel.”

“Yes,” Tonia said, “and maybe Sara knows, too, in her own way. But sometimes,
hija
, well … sometimes blood is not the only thing.”

“Now
I
don't understand.”

“Me and Sara, we're like sisters, we grew up together. We don't see each other for more than forty years. But when I walked up to the door of the Committee, and we stood face to face, we were sisters again. It's not always the blood. And I think that Sara will see this the same way, because Laura grew up as Manuel's child. She sees the love for her son in your daughter's eyes.”

“But it's just not the same. We're talking about children now, mothers and children, Manuel and Sara, you and Renato, me and Laura. Sometimes it
is
about the blood. And what about Laura's dreams? The blood talks, Tonia.”

“Not always with a single voice. Take me and Renato. He's not really my son, did you know that? My Florindo and I adopted him. But after he was killed, who died of grief? My Florindo, not his blood papa! Whose dreams did he haunt? His blood mama's? No! He haunted mine! He haunted me! No one else could help him cross the river of tears to his eternal rest. That's why I've worked with the Committee. Sometimes,” and Tonia's voice became a breeze whispering through the room, “sometimes, it just goes beyond the ties of blood.”