Gringa (28 page)

She trudged the other way.

Suddenly he grabbed her from behind, by her hair, “Stop, gringa,” he said. He sounded as though he was trying to be very authoritative. Maybe they let him practice on the unimportant ones. They were standing by what looked like a closet. He opened the door and shoved her in and reached up to turn on a bare dim light above them. Along one wall stacks of paper in reams filled two shelves. On other shelves there were small boxes, maybe paper clips, or staples.

He jerked her around. There wasn't quite enough room for both of them, and one of his legs was stuck out in the hall through the partly open door. This calmed her. She didn't think he would do anything too terrible with his leg out like that. He probably wanted a quick feel; if she knew anything, that was all it would take for him. He was a boy.

He pinched her breasts through the blouse. She was so tired, she reached out to rest one arm against the shelves.

He yanked her away from the wall. He put his hand in her hair and pulled her to him to kiss. She had known it was coming, and she didn't fight it, but it made her gag. She could imagine any horrible thing coming out of his foul-smelling, foul-tasting mouth: snakes and beetles, poison mushrooms, moldy cheese. He thrust his tongue deep into her mouth.

“You gringas like the fuck, huh?” he said in English. When she reached up involuntarily to wipe her mouth with her hand, he stuck his huge tongue out and licked her face like a dog. He stepped back a bit and jerked her skirt up toward her waist.

“Aiee!” he cried, and dropped the skirt. “What's that blood?”

She thought: How funny that a little blood makes me strong. He doesn't want me because I have my period. Good for me.

She shoved past him and out the door. She was thinking of the mattresses in the cafeteria, the arms of Estrella and Ceci.

He punched her in the back with his fist. It took her breath away, and she stopped short, almost stumbling.

“Turn around!”

She complied.

“I asked you, what's that blood?”

“It's my period.” She wasn't certain of the word in Spanish. “My monthly blood.”

“I don't like it. I don't fuck girls with blood.”

She shrugged. He was pathetic. She turned again. His fist caught her high on the cheekbone, in front of the ear. The blow sent her to the floor. The lights went out. The lights went on. She was on her hands and knees.

He had undone his pants. He stood, in the middle of the hallway, with his erect penis sticking out at her. He was grinning. “Pues, you sucky me.”

She put her hands to her face. His cock nudged at her fingers.

Felix was waiting for her in the morning; he had arranged her release. He took her to a hotel to bathe and sleep. Later on he brought her clothes. He had things she needed from the pharmacy in a white bag. He said his sister had helped him. It was her lovely soft violet dress Abilene put on. Her shoes were a little too large. They slid on Abilene's heels.

Felix had food sent to the room, and they ate on the bed. He said he had a ticket for her to go to San Marta the next day. “And Claude's apartment has been ransacked. I've paid the concierge to get it back in order. The police were there in the night. I called Girard, too. He wasn't happy.”

She moaned, but she couldn't really think of those things.

“What did they do to you, you look awful,” Felix said.

“It was nothing. It all seems so bad because it was my period and I had nothing I needed.”

“I wish I believed you,” Felix said. “I'm so sorry. I told you I was afraid for you, but I don't think I really believed this would happen.”

“How did you know?”

“Isabel.”

“And Ceci?”

“She's still there.” He washed his hands and said he would go. He would be back for her in the morning.

She put her hand on Felix's chest. “Don't go away and leave me by myself.”

“I'll pick you up in the morning, eight o'clock.”

“I want you to stay, Felix. Please stay. I don't want to be by myself.”

“I've always wanted to,” he said.

“It's my period.” Men were like that.

“It's because I feel sorry for you. First you made a fool of yourself, and now you're hurt when you don't really deserve it. I wish I knew how to make it better. But not as a man and woman. This pity, it kills the desire. You must go back to the Tecoluca with your head up; Tonio won't like it, either, seeing you so down. It's funny. I always thought Tonio would get tired of you and I would come along behind and save you. I've done it before, you know that, with other women. Now here you are, and it isn't what I want at all. I just feel sorry for you.”

He might as well have slapped her. He must have understood her expression, because before he left he added, “This is much better, really, the feeling between friends. You'll never have to worry about me coming on to you, and I'll still like you.”

She was alone in a hotel room. She thought of the women back in the prison. They were all innocent, but there was a reason for them to be there. It was for something they believed in. They were part of something bigger than themselves.

But me, she thought. I've finally gotten what I came for, everyone was right.

You think you know better, and you don't know anything at all. You go around like a bird on the ground, pecking and squawking and forgetting all about the sky. You surprise yourself with your stupidity.

What that awful boy did—it was nothing more than what I've done to myself a hundred times over.

Tonio will see. He will smell it on me, not fear, but humiliation, shame. He won't want me. He won't want to put his mouth on mine.

Her throat constricted with pain. To start over would take such courage, and she had none. It was like that day in Texas, when she said, in the back of someone's car, “There's no one I could tell.”

Then she remembered that Adele had dreamed of Sylvia Britton. Barton. Had dreamed of reaching out to her.

“I'm alive!” she would tell Adele. “You've got to help me.”

When she got to the apartment on Obregon, she had to make the taxi wait, and go up and ask Adele for the taxi money. When Adele opened the door, she threw her arms around Abilene. “We've been so worried!” she said.

Hallie had been there, too. She had left money for Abilene to take to the family in Tlatelolco. She had left her address.

“Her father came for her,” Adele said. They smiled. They understood that Hallie had always been safe.

Daniel said, “You can stay as long as you want.”

Adele said, “I'm sorry I've been so preoccupied. I want you to stay.”

Pola called her name from the door across the room. Abilene crossed to her quickly and hugged her.

“Did they do things to you?” Pola whispered. “Did they touch you there?”

October 2, 1968

Four green flares shot off at six-ten p.m. were the signal for troops attached to the Olimpia Battalion, dressed in civilian clothes, to open fire on the students and workers demonstrating in Tlatelolco that afternoon.

-the press secretary of the Autonomous

National University of Mexico, quoted in

Massacre in Mexico

From Adele's transcripts:

Abilene:

We had been talking about going to L.A. Pola was looking forward to being fourteen. She saw it as a real crossroads. She was angry with her mother because she was no longer the center of the universe for Adele, because of Daniel. Sometimes I said, “Oh Pola, you can't mean it,” or “Oh Pola, you can't think that,” but my objections were weak. I don't know anything at all about relationships, about how people work out problems, how they show love. Besides, the idea of going to California appealed to me. I managed to convince myself it was possible. Pola wanted to go to Yannis. Yannis travels, is very busy, wouldn't be able to be with her enough. I would go along to look after Pola. Pola had already written Yannis to ask about it. I felt worse and worse, I knew I had to talk to Adele, but I couldn't seem to get the energy, and she was busy. She was kind, but she was very busy. To go to L.A. Imagine, that was how I was going to work out my life. I hadn't thought of anything else.

We should never have gone out to Tlatelolco that day. Adele had been very firm about it; she wanted Pola off the streets. Adele was going out to the meeting that had been called in the Plaza of Three Cultures, to take pictures. She was excited, because she had heard that Oriana Fallaci was in town for the Olympics, and Fallaci had already sniffed out the trouble with the students and was sure to be there, too. She said she might be late. It was a Tuesday night, and Pola would need to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Adele said if I was still up when she got home, she would tell me about it.

We felt cooped up, Pola and I. We didn't like being told to stay home like children, though I no longer cared about the strike. Pola reminded me that I hadn't taken the money left by Hallie out to the family in Tlatelolco, and that was enough to make me “give in,” as though we had something to take care of, and it didn't have anything to do with the meeting.

The meeting was supposed to be held to call off the strikes until after the Olympics. I don't remember if I knew that before the meeting, or if it's something I heard right after. Because it was so ironic, they were going to call it off so they wouldn't be an embarrassment to the government, and before they could even say that, the army moved in.

The crowd was incredible. We came into the square from one of the narrow alleyways and saw people were hanging out of windows and over balconies. Kids had climbed onto the fountains and onto one another's shoulders. There were students going around handing out flyers about the suspension of the strike. They said the government was going to have an open dialogue with them after the foreigners all went home. A compromise, but it would keep the army out of it, someone said. It would keep them out of jail, too.

People were streaming through the cramped corridors off the avenue, into the plaza. There were old people getting off work and going home, and there were bureaucrats coming out of the office buildings to get a look. There were old ladies with black scarves on their heads, and everywhere you looked, little kids were racing around playing tag and hide-and-seek. There were people all the way from the edge of the ruins to the church. People were moving around but not really going anywhere, like they were in jelly.

I knew we shouldn't have come, but I thought if we just went about our business, if we got into the apartment building, we would be okay. I put my arm around Pola's waist. “You stick close to me,” I said, trying to sound really stern. She pointed to the other side of the plaza. “We've got to get over there!” she said. It was going to take some doing.

We worked our way through the crowd, and we were more than halfway there when someone started yelling through a megaphone. Pola wanted to stop and listen. I kept pushing her on, closer to the building. Pola just stopped, like a balky animal. For the first time, really, I looked around me. We were in the middle of thousands of people. I looked up toward the speaker on the balcony. There were photographers leaning out of windows snapping pictures of the crowd.

“I wonder where Mommy is,” Pola said.

There was a man standing on the other side of Pola, with binoculars. I heard Pola ask him what he could see. He wasn't especially friendly, but he said, “Just a bunch of crazy kids.” I leaned around to take a look at him, and I saw the funniest thing. He was holding the binoculars in his right hand, and he had his left hand, by Pola, stuck in his jacket pocket. I could tell that he was wearing a white glove—just on that one hand, in the pocket. The edge of it showed above the top of the cloth. I almost said something about it to him, and then I thought, oh it must be something awful. Maybe his hand is deformed, I thought.

Pola asked, “Can I use your binoculars for just a moment, to look for my mother? She's on one of those balconies over there. She's a photographer.”

He hesitated, holding the binoculars up to his own eyes for another moment, and then he said, “Okay, for a little look.”

Pola loved the binoculars. Maybe she had never looked through binoculars before. She was so excited. “It's amazing!” she said. “I can see the mouth of the speaker moving. His shirt gaps open at the top, like he needs another button.” She moved her head a couple of inches, and swept a look across the balconies. “Mommy could be anywhere!” she said.

I had a tight grip on Pola's arm. I was starting to get nervous. I didn't like the way people were hanging out of windows. Somebody could throw a rock and hit a head sticking out too far, I thought. I didn't like being in the middle of so many bodies.

The man took his binoculars back and used them to look straight up into the sky. It had begun to sprinkle just a little bit. It would rain harder in a while. It was that time of day.

“We're going to get wet, come on, we've got to get to the apartment in Chihuahua,” I told Pola. I held her hand and almost dragged her, winding our way through the crowd. We had almost reached the steps of the building when a light gashed across the gray sky. “What is it!” Pola yelled. There was a terrible racket, a droning, and then a whack! whack! whack! People started screaming. Lights flashed across the sky again. All I could think to do was grab Pola up against my body and hold on tight. Then I realized I was hearing shots, and screams. Pola was trying to wiggle away from me. “Where's my mother?!” she screamed over and over.

“You've got to come on,” I said. She was so strong, I couldn't pull her the last few yards.

It was so quick, Pola's change of heart. It only took those seconds, the sounds of helicopters and the screams in the plaza, and she knew she wouldn't leave her mother. She looked at me and said, “I'm sorry, Abby.” I didn't know what she meant yet. POLA! I screamed. This was for real, this wasn't a movie, or a story about something happening someplace else. “I can't go with you,” Pola yelled. “I can't go to L.A.”

“IT DOESN'T MATTER!” I screamed. “COME ON!”

I was facing her when I yelled. Over her shoulder I saw that man, the one with the glove and the binoculars. Pola must have seen the funny look on my face, because she swung around and saw him too.

“Please!” she cried to him. “Let me use your binoculars to look for my mother. Please.”

Then we could both see he wasn't the man with the binoculars. He was another man with a white-gloved hand, and it was in the air, above his head. In his other hand he held a gun. All of a sudden I saw that there were many men like him, all with their white hands in the air, and guns.

People were falling to the ground. Someone's shoe flew into the air beside us and landed right in front of Pola. It was a backsling sandal like Adele sometimes wore. Pola grabbed at it, and came up, holding onto the shoe. I started screaming and crying and pulling at her all at once.

She never cried out. She must have seen it, the black heart of the gun. It was like a great hole into which she fell and fell. Open-mouthed with astonishment, holding onto the sandal, she fell. The blood from her shattered cheek oozed into a puddle and was trampled underfoot by children racing past. The rain began to pour hard. When it stopped, the Plaza of Three Cultures was stained crimson. White gloves lay about with shoes and purses and sodden pamphlets. Like the wounded. Like the dead.

Daniel:

When I write in my ledgers I feel nothing. Names, numbers, places. The killing has stopped, but the arrests go on. Everything in me that has feeling is dead. I am a machine. When I wake in the night and stare at the dark, the names come back to me, as if they are being spoken aloud. I see them lying at the police stations, the Red Cross headquarters, on the lawn. I was looking for Pola. When I found her, they said I would have to sign a paper that said she was an agitator against the government. I had to sign it to get her body. There were so many others. Elisa Avendano, fourteen, a Prep student. Señora Paula Lopez, a housewife. Juan Duran, teacher of mathematics. Who were they? Who loved them?

What would they be doing now? What would they have become? They were mostly young people, full of mystery. They hadn't had time to develop their complexity. They had not yet become themselves.

Ceci:

I've been sentenced to an indefinite period, and moved into the section with women who had been tried for crimes. When I was first arrested I was very frightened. I waited all night to be questioned, and then they blindfolded me and beat my shoulders. They told me about the terrible things they could do to me. They kept me from the toilet so that I soiled myself. I told them nothing at all, and they lost interest. There were so many new ones coming in. We tried to keep one another's spirits up. Now they try to separate us, but there are too many of us. They would have to fling us, like a chain, the length of the country. I'm not scared anymore. It's not so bad, day to day. It's terribly noisy, and boring, of course. I'm sorry that I missed so much—the last battles, even Tlatelolco. And I don't know when it will be over, that's the worst of it. How long? What will I look like in a year? Two years? Ten? That's what tortures me, not knowing. That, and being as ignorant today as I was yesterday. I realize now that I loved my studies. Some of the women mock us students, but others ask us: What did you learn in school? Is it too late for me to learn, too? I'm teaching a prostitute to read. She's a year older than I am, and she has been on the streets since she was eleven or twelve. “Next time I can read my charges,” she says, and laughs about it. I never laugh, never. But I don't cry, either.

Adele:

When I met the Italian journalist, she said, “This is the real news in Mexico. The Olympics are nothing beside this.” She was so excited, a small peppery woman. Later I saw her on the balcony next to mine.

By 5:30 five thousand people had gathered to listen to the speakers from the National Strike Committee. I was thinking: Have I taped their voices? Do I know what they want? It had become so important to me to hear them. There was a mosaic I was constructing, and I had to have all the pieces: young girls in miniskirts, and mothers in shawls and sturdy shoes. Professors and anthropologists, nuns, businessmen, factory workers, railway workers, artists. My list had grown. Each tape took a space in the picture I was making of Mexico in a time of change. I knew that what was happening would affect Mexico for a generation to come. For the first time I felt the thrill of the journalist, the documenter. I thought I understood Fallaci.

So many of the victims were bystanders. They had not come with malice in their hearts. Whatever they say, whatever the papers say, I was there. The malice was brought in like cannon.

The flares. The terrible sounds. Down in the crowd I could see there were white hands cutting the air, and then there was the panic.

What kind of government murders pregnant women, children, and students, randomly? What did they fear so much?

And my love! My child! She was one of so many. She didn't even have the privilege of her own death.

I heard Fallaci crying out in English, “I'm shot! The sons of bitches have shot me! I'm going to tell the whole world!”

I ran down the stairs, it seemed I ran for hours. There was blood everywhere, and already hundreds shoved against walls waiting to be hauled away. Hundreds had gathered by the ancient church; its doors were never opened that whole terrible night.

They were piling bodies in the rain.

I could not speak to Abilene, I was mute. I looked at her and all I could think was that she had seen it happen. She had been there, and not me.

I remember thinking a long time ago, when we were in Zi that winter, that she had a funny schoolgirl's thought, that when a man fucked you, there must be a reason. That it ought to be for something. Now I should have said to her, it's true of death. Death must be for something, when it cuts lives so cruelly short. I was so numb. Tears kept pouring out of Abby's eyes, but she didn't make a sound. She was crying like that the morning she left, and still she hadn't cried aloud. I just watched her leave. I couldn't say anything. She was all the way downstairs, and out on the street, when I knew what I had to tell her. I ran to the window and threw it open, I leaned out perilously above the walk, and I screamed after her, “Let it make you live! Dig down inside and bring up the anger, and you'll live!”

Let it be for something.

I don't think she heard me.

On All Soul's Day the hotelkeeper's wife, Nando Piñeda's mother, came to the apartment for me. We took flowers and candles to the Plaza. Women hid in the shadows. Then one of them went out and laid a photograph on the ground and beside it, a votive candle. She made the sign of the cross and knelt.