Something Fierce (10 page)
The bus continued along the highway at top speed. The Southern Cross led the way in the pitch black. I sat motionless, legs like noodles, skin tingling. Brief bouts of sleep took me on adventures filled with bullets, torrential downpours and snowy peaks. The sound of flapping wings, like an eagle taking flight, woke me with a start. The bus had pulled into a station, and passengers clogged the aisles, ready to exit.
“Last chance for La Serena,” the bus driver yelled on the platform. “We depart in three minutes.”
As we wove out of La Serena, a great boulevard displayed its name prominently: Aguirre. Seven years ago, I'd spent a summer here. This was the region where my father was born, and his parents, and their parents, all the way back to the Conquest. In our photo album there was a picture of my parents, Ale and me on the beach here, too, sharing Popsicles.
The streets of Santiago were jammed with buses, taxis, ice cream vendors walking through the traffic and hundreds of necking teenage couples. The heat had rotted the garbage, and the smell was unfathomable. This city was the most beautiful, dangerous and exciting place I could imagine, the place where my mother had carried me in her womb in the student days of the sixties and where a midwife had pulled me into the world.
A weary-looking woman was standing on the station platform, purse clutched to her chest. Our eyes met hers. It took a split second for her to realize who we were, but once she did, she leapt a foot off the ground. Her face broke into a smile, bringing a dancing light into her eyes. She ran alongside the bus, yelping and laughing. My palms pressed hard against the glass, leaving their imprint behind. The doors of the bus flew open, and we ran down the aisle. The woman stood at the bottom of the steps, a hanky in her fist. She was wearing her Sunday best: a flowery dress, knee-high stockings and black shoes, her grey coat nestled in the crook of her arm. Her thick hair, cropped close to her jaw, was freshly combed. I smelled Coral cologne as we were enveloped in Grandma Carmen's embrace.
M
Y GRANDMOTHER'S VIRGIN sisters lived with their mother in a mini-Parthenon in Santiago's Barrio Alto. A set of marble steps led to the entrance, which was framed by marble columns on either side. The floors inside were marble, as were the walls. Even the twenty-foot-long dining room table was gleaming white marble. Every surface in the house was adorned with crocheted white doilies, and upon every doily sat a glass poodle. From the top of the second floor, a real poodle barked at us.
My great-grandmother Dulcinea had suffered a stroke, and the left side of her face was frozen solid. She ignored this weakness, pride being her staple diet. Bisabuela sat at the head of the table, flanked by her four daughters, two great-granddaughters (Ale and me) and my grandfather Armando, her hated son-in-law. Even though he later became a school principal, my grandfather was the son of a nitrate miner and a seamstress, both of whom had died young. He'd earned his keep shining shoes from the age of four and was now the sole survivor of a brood of thirteen. My grandmother Carmen had run away with Armando from her family's big locked-up house in the north of Chile. Her father, now dead, had been a brutal military man. Those who'd suffered most at his hands had been his own wife and children. He beat them regularly, and he'd leave the house for days on end, locking the door from the outside and leaving his family to starve.
My great-aunts Milagros, Remedios and Perlita had made a blood pact back then to remain virgins, so that no man would ever control their lives. Their pact also required them to make a fortune, which they had done: while still in their teens, the three sisters had moved to Santiago and become smugglers of precious jewellery and fine leather goods from Argentina. Now they owned a mini-mall in the Plaza de Armas, facing the back of the seat of government, La Moneda Palace, from which they operated a boutique that sold crystal poodles. The factory that made these poodles belonged to them too. They were prepared to defend their riches at gunpoint, as long as they didn't have to do the actual shooting. They supported Pinochet through an organization called Fatherland and Liberty and masturbated to the portrait of him that hung in their house. Mami had explained all of this to me, including the masturbation part.
Lunch was served by two maids in embroidered aprons and “el maestro,” a handyman, butler, waiter and man about the house. Two military men had joined us at the table, still wearing their guns. When Gerardo, my grandmother's younger brother, had drunk himself to death on skid row, my great-aunts had taken his two sons away from their mother and enrolled their nephews at military academies. Now here they were, sitting at the table with their buzz cuts and decorated jackets. Nobody was saying what had happened to their mother, though Mami had heard whispers of the great-aunts locking her up in a state-run loony bin. There was so much I wanted to know but dared not ask. Mami had warned us to be careful what we said in Chile. Remember that the enemy is most likely in the heart of your family, she'd told us.
Before lunch, the youngest and most stylish great-aunt had taken Ale and me on a tour of the house. Trying to make small talk, I'd said, “TÃa Perlita, your white pantsuit is just like my Mami's.” “Your mami?” she'd responded. “I thought that Commie liked to dress like the Indians. Why is she dressing in pantsuits now?”
“I don't know. Has anybody ever told you you look just like Kate Jackson from
Charlie's Angels?”
My great-aunt was not to be diverted. “Please shut your mouth. My nerves are frayed enough listening to my own blood talk like the cholas who relieve themselves in the street. Why can't you speak proper Chilean Spanish? And what is your family doing in Bolivia, anyway?”
Then she'd freaked out at Ale, who'd stroked the head of a porcelain doll that sat in an armchair by Auntie Perlita's bed. As we walked back down the stairs, I looked at Ale and whispered, “Tick-tock-tick-tock-ding-a-ling-a-cuckoo.”
Milagros, the oldest great-aunt, dominated the conversation at the table, bragging about some new medals the military nephews had received. My uncle Boris had described the great-aunts with such accuracy that I felt as if I'd entered a fairy tale, vivid and terrifying. The poodle, called Preciosa, was now poised on my great-grandmother's lap. Dulcinea held a fly swatter in her right hand, punctuating the conversation with rhythmic swats at the fruit flies that threatened to land on the starched white tablecloth. She governed the table in steely silence, her thick white hair held back in a bun. She wasn't scary, though, which surprised me. At times I even caught a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
As the nephews held forth on national security, my grandmother feigned interest by raising her eyebrows or murmuring softly. My grandfather kept his head down. There was no sign of the boisterous, storytelling duo I loved so well. We were here out of duty: it was the day before Christmas, and my abuelita couldn't leave Santiago without visiting her mother. Finally Ale interrupted one of the nephews with an inopportune question.
“Have you killed people with that gun?”
“Shut your mouth, mini-hippie,” Milagros snapped.
My bisabuela winked at Ale as my grandfather announced that it was time for us to be going.
IT WAS MORE beautiful than I'd imagined, this home my grandparents had created in Limache after the coup. Beams of sunlight entered through the tall windows to shine on the dark wooden floor. A white gas stove was the centre of my grandmother's universe, and the large kitchen table was where she rolled out dough, beat eggs, sliced fruit fresh from the orchard and decorated cakes. The back rooms of the house, built for the exiles' eventual return, were a treasure hunter's paradise. I spent hours going through my parents' boxes of books, notebooks and photo albums. Even their clothes lay intact in a trunk, along with some of Ale's and my old drawings, clothes and toys.
The orchard was a magic place, and at the end of it was a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Chickens laid their eggs in a coop and, when special occasions called for it, were killed, plucked and cooked by my grandmother. The sky was clear and blue, the air filled with the scent of fruit and flowers. It was idyllic. After we'd all gone to bed, I could hear the shortwave playing in my grandparents' room. Radio Moscow wasn't popular with Pinochet. Everybody listened to it, though, because it was the only way to find out what was really going on in Chile.
One morning as I sat on the toilet, about to pee, the doorbell to my grandparents' house rang. There were loud hellos, and I could hear my first cousin, Chelito, being escorted into the kitchen, where a pot of tea, apricot jam and fresh-baked bread awaited. My heart started pounding in a way I'd never experienced. I twisted and turned on the toilet, too embarrassed to pee until I finally reached over and turned on the taps.
I scrambled to the mirror and took a good look at my face. For the first time in my life, I saw that I wasn't pretty. Mami had always told me I was the most beautiful girl in the world, but mothers lied, I realized now. My teeth were bigger than a horse's, my lips were chapped, and I had a unibrow and a moustache. The Cousin's voice moved up the back of my neck, causing my toes to curl.
My grandmother was knocking on the bathroom door, demanding that I come out. As I did, I was hit by a sight that shook me from soles to crown. Chelito was sixteen, and he glowed like a circus tent in the night. His eyes were green; suddenly, the whole room was emerald. There was a flash of white teeth and dimples, and a smooth bronze chest revealed itself through the undone buttons of his crumpled shirt. The Cousin was perched on a wooden stool, his palms pressed on strong thighs. His pelvis reached out and up, with the force of an orca parting the waters, and then his arms were around my back, his pelvis jammed against my belly.
“Cousin, cousin, exiled cousin!” His breath smelled like condensed milk and tobacco.
He set me down, and I stood swaying. “The typhoid's hit me,” I said faintly.
The Cousin stuffed a piece of buttery toast in his mouth as my grandmother's hand landed on my forehead. She shook her head; there was no fever. “Hurry and eat before the tea and bread go stone cold,” she scolded.
That afternoon the Cousin leaned next to the round wooden radio in the living room, searching for the perfect station from Viña del Mar, the one that played “Mama Maremma” and “Boogie Wonderland.” He hummed along to the music, his pelvis a corkscrew. My disco dancing classes in that musty church basement in Vancouver were paying off now. The Cousin smiled as I did a kick ball change around him, never forgetting to snap my fingers on the kick.
From then on, wherever he went, I followed. If he was lying in the orchard surrounded by exploding watermelons, I sat cross-legged next to him. If he was on his bed leafing through old magazines, I leaned against the door frame. At first Ale trailed after me, asking if I wanted to play cards or dice. But eventually she got bored of bringing up the rear and spent her afternoons with our grandmother, watching talk shows or fetching the eggs the chickens laid.
I stayed up late so I could sit at the dining room table with the Cousin and my grandfather. They smoked cigarettes, played cards and talked about loose women. They thought I didn't understand. But I did. I understood everything now.
When siesta came each day, Ale dozed in her bed. My grandfather dreamed in his. My grandmother snored at the dining room table as a Brazilian soap opera blasted from the TV. The Cousin would slide on his motorcycle jacket, slip a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and sneak out the front door. Only after I'd seen him walk all the way down the sidewalk from my station at the kitchen window did I enter his room and begin the feast of smells and textures. I would inhale the armpits of his lifeless shirt and the crotch of his empty jeans until I was light-headed. One afternoon, as he pulled his black jacket on, he looked back at me over his shoulder and moved his head in the direction of the outside world. I followed him into the forbidden universe of Limache at siesta.
He led the journey to the plaza in his tight jeans. Every so often a tiny flame would travel from his hand to a fresh Lucky Strike. The match flew into the gutter as a stream of smoke left his generous mouth. I stayed two steps behind, matching my pace to his.
I'd strolled around Limache before, with Ale and my grandparents. It was a sleepy town with one general store along the main strip. The store was owned by Señor Perez, a kind, gentle man who was also a Pinochet supporter. He let my grandparents use the store's phone whenever they called Canada collect, but politics was never spoken between them. The plaza was beautiful, with a yellow fountain at its centre. The buses from Santiago arrived there, and the plaza was where the cathedral stood, with its ancient bell.
Today, the colours were so vivid it hurt. The voices that surrounded us belonged to creatures beyond beautiful. There was a bearded lady strumming her guitar outside the Jehovah's Witnesses Hall. Two Mormons, unmistakable with their buzz cuts, blindingly white shirts and American drawl, sipped orange Fantas as they strode by, Bibles held to their hips. Señor Perez, in his smock and spectacles, was heading home for siesta. We passed my grandmother's neighbours, the ones she'd warned us were informers. We passed the fortress on the corner that everyone whispered was one of Pinochet's weekend getaways. The hot breeze in the trees, the smell of raw sewage and dirt, the doe-eyed girl who sold the bread, the shoeshine boys resting on their wooden boxes, the ice cream man singing out “Chocolate, strawberry, vanilla and chirimoya” in his lazy tenor: it was as if I was discovering it all for the first time.