The Summer We Came to Life (10 page)

Alfredo Guerra slammed a fist on the table. “Afuera!” he screamed at Jesse. “Out!” Her smile faltered. She looked to her friends, the maids, who averted their eyes, terrified. Jesse snatched Isabel from her highchair and ran out of the room.

Cesar lowered his head. This was a fight Jesse couldn't win. To his credit, he tried to warn her.

“Baby?” Cesar whispered into Jesse's ear as she lay in their bed, pretending to sleep. A slight giveaway—she was shaking with anger. At them. At herself. At the world.

“Mi reina, my queen, don't do this to yourself. To me. Please. It can only end badly. Worse than you can imagine.”

Jesse opened her eyes. Was that a threat? “I'm not scared of them, Cesar. Why are you? Why are you scared of your own family?”

Cesar sighed and wrapped an arm around his wife. “For reasons I hope I'll never have to tell you,” he said, with a tiredness that swept into Jesse.

Jesse started to ask, but something in her told her to quit for the day. Isabel let out a cry from her crib. Jesse made to get up.

“I'll go. Rest, baby. Try and calm yourself,” Cesar said as he picked up Isabel from her mound of blankets. He snuggled the baby into the crook of his arm and rocked her, her little fingers curled around his thumb.

Jesse watched them and a sob sprang to her lips. She was reminded in that instant what she had to lose.

The day after the dinner incident, Alfredo Guerra replaced most of the staff. He also bought a home in a nearby neighborhood for Jesse and Cesar that would be ready in two short months. Jesse was ecstatic. “Who said I couldn't win?” she taunted Cesar. Cesar said nothing. He'd lived in that house for too long, and knew how things worked too well.

 

Another seven months, and Jesse was on her knees. “Baby, please don't go. Or just take us with you. I've only been to the Valle house once. One time. What do you
do
there?”

“Business! Dios mio! Business everyday! What do you think I do?” Cesar replied, irritated.

Jesse remembered Cesar's stories of his father's mistresses. “Yeah right,” she snapped.

“Dammit! Pinche!” he pointed angrily out the window where there were two guards with rifles. “What do you think is going on out there, outside of this house? Eh? Do you have any idea—”

“How would I, you asshole? How would I know? You never take us anywhere!”

“It's utter chaos! Torrijos is gone. Dead. Killed by your countrymen most likely. And now Noriega is at the helm. Things change so fast, it's all I can do to stay in the game, to
carve out a piece of the pie for us. My father would like to sit back and wash clean his hands, spend the fortune I create by his methods.”

“Like the Guerras will ever be poor—,” Jesse said in pure spite.

Cesar looked at Jesse with eyes that would chill a bed of coals. “No, my family won't be. But only because I am making sure of that. I am protecting my family.”

Jesse studied her husband. He looked ragged and mean. His face was leaner, but he'd grown a gut. Jesse could only imagine what he'd been up to trying to maintain the family's millions. In the Guerra mansion, she'd seen suitcases filled with money. Once, Ana, her favorite maid, let slip rumors she'd heard about connections to drug cartels. She almost felt sorry for Cesar. Then she searched his face. All she could see was hardened evil.

“Don't do anything to get arrested,” Jesse said finally, meeting him square in the eyes.

He tossed his head back and laughed as if Jesse had told the funniest joke in the world.

 

By the time Isabel's third birthday came around, Jesse knew what Cesar had known would happen all along. She had lost. She was still a prisoner, now one in solitary confinement. To staff Jesse's house, Alfredo Guerra had hired a senile old woman and a handyman/chef who only spoke Nahuatl, an Aztec language. Guards stood at the front gate, the only way out, round the clock. She had no driver and no car. She had to call for one from the Guerras, who then reported anyplace she went. Señora Guerra insisted on three days a week of visitation of her granddaughter. She came by in a car and sent a guard in to collect Isabel. Jesse was never asked to visit their house again.

The worst thing, however, was that she had lost Cesar as an ally. His father kept him always away, but even when he
came into town, he would dine at his father's house. He complained of the chef and of Jesse's constant nagging. Jesse had started fanatically reading newspapers and trash magazines she bought at the grocery store, searching for clues about Cesar and Alfredo. It wasn't long before Jesse found fuzzy pictures of Cesar carousing with a woman on a hotel balcony, and had thrown a raging fit the minute he walked in from a business trip. Cesar had picked up Isabel and walked back out the door.

“You can't do that, you asshole! You can't just fuck whoever you want and then walk out of here with my daughter!”

Jesse tore at her hair and pounded on the door after it slammed shut. Of course he could. Cesar Guerra could sleep with whomever he wanted and come and go as he pleased.

 

Jesse was desperate for attention. The supermarket was her only approved destination anymore, so Jesse would go in and strike up a conversation with anyone who would talk to her. She gave her phone number to the clerks and told them to call her. She didn't tell them anything, not even who she was, though of course they knew. She just asked them about their lives and told them she was lonely. But that's how Jesse found out that they monitored her phone records, when she went to the store after talking to Frederico late into the night and was told he'd been fired. The phone number he'd given her was disconnected. Cesar never said a word about it. That was when Jesse realized he no longer cared about her at all.

 

So, by Isabel's fourth year, Jesse had not a friend in the world. Not for the first time in her life, she wished she had a relationship with her mother. She called her father but never managed to convey the situation. There was nothing he could do and it would only give him more to worry
about. She talked to him about Isabel and the house and the weather.

Now that Isabel could talk, Jesse had to even watch what she said to her daughter. All day, she sat and played with Isabel. She took baths with her and invented game after game. More and more often, however, Isabel started to whine to go to
casa abuelos
. She came home from her sleepovers with boxes of toys and gifts and candy from Abuelita.

One day, Jesse caught her playing a trick on the maid. She stole her eyeglasses and told her Tenoch, the chef, had stolen them.

Something in Jesse snapped. For some reason, it was the last straw.

“Isabel! Get over here!” she yelled at her daughter. Isabel, surprised and guilty, inched a millimeter closer. Jesse ran over and grabbed her by her pink dress. “I will not let that family turn you into a monster. You hear me? You are not going to Grandma's tonight! You're going to stay here and have dinner with Marta and Tenoch and me. Now say you're sorry,” she said into Isabel's defiant face.

Isabel kicked Jesse in the shin. Jesse let go in surprise, and Isabel ran off. From the top of the stairs, Isabel called, “Abuelita will come for me!” and stuck out her tongue. “I hate you!” she added and ran to her room.

Jesse was stunned. And then the full hopelessness of her life hit Jesse in the gut.

An hour later, a guard arrived to pick up Isabel. Jesse didn't answer the doorbell. Just as she was about to yell for him to go away, Isabel ran down the stairs as fast as she could, and Jesse heard the door open with the turn of a key. Jesse made it to the door in time to see the guard scoop up a gleeful Isabel. Jesse screamed like a madwoman, grabbing Isabel's arm and scaring her, as the guard wrenched her away and locked her in the backseat of the car.

Jesse pounded on the windows as they drove away, then
ran into the house, looking around wildly. She called the Guerras until all she got was a busy signal. Finally, she went outside and walked/ran the four miles to the house. Her guards didn't chase her, but when she got to the Guerras' gate, their guard held his rifle across his chest and told her to leave. After screaming and cursing at the top of her lungs, a car appeared on the street to take Jesse home.

It was a horrible three days. Finally, Isabel was dropped off on the doorstep. Isabel was delighted to see her, having no idea about the situation, and played with her new dolls and tried to cheer up her weepy mother.

Jesse sank into a depression. She no longer showered or dressed in the mornings. She lay in bed in a stained silk nightgown and kneesocks and listened to Pink Floyd records. One time when the guard dropped off Isabel, he left behind a bottle of prescription pills. Sedatives. Jesse briefly wondered if Señora Guerra was trying to poison her. With a strange feeling of glee, Jesse took the first of many pills she would take over the next months. It was during one of those droning, listless months that Jesse's mother died. Jesse did not even ask to go to the funeral.

BACK ON A PORCH HALFWAY BETWEEN NORTH America and Panama, a fifty-three-year-old Jesse stopped talking. She put a hand to her temples, shading her eyes. She did not want to look at anyone on the porch.

“And then you left him, Mom?” Isabel asked in barely a whisper, as she laid a hand on Jesse's leg.

The rest of us shifted in our seats and waited respectfully for Jesse's answer.

“And then I left him, baby girl,” Jesse said, with a tone of sorrow I had never heard in Jesse Brighton's voice.

Isabel nodded. She sniffled and rubbed her mother's leg reassuringly. Then she wiped her nose and looked at us, glad for the story to be ending.

“'Course,” Jesse said, stopping Isabel from speaking, “then they kidnapped you and put me in jail.” Jesse patted Isabel's hand, then shifted out of her reach. Isabel's mother closed her eyes and went from the Honduran coastline back to Panama City.

 

“When my mother died, the first thing I felt was something like relief. Then shame. Then nothing. I didn't tell Isabel because she'd never known her. I gave some silly excuse to my father. After another season passed—” Jesse broke off, realizing how that sounded. “It took me that long to realize I was to Isabel just what my mother had been to me. I could lie doped up in bed all day and reminisce about who I'd been, but Isabel would never know. I knew that soon I would start hating her for how she saw me, and for her happiness. It was the first time I wondered who
my
mother had been, if maybe she'd only
become
that spiteful sad woman.” Jesse shot a look at Isabel, who was sitting now with her chin resting atop her hands on the table.

“And
that
made me get out of bed. I called my father and said I was coming home. I don't know if he knew I meant for good. I hated asking him to send me the money, but I swore on my life I would pay him back. It took a lot of scheming and bribery and flirting to get all of Isabel's paperwork and to get around the guards.” Jesse's voice rose to her more usual tone. She winked when I looked in her direction.

“I felt positively high. I was back! Cha-cha-cha. I was going to take my baby and move back to the land of the free and the brave. I packed one of Cesar's old suitcases. I used the grocery money for a taxi and found a way to trick the guards. You were so excited!” Jesse said to Isabel, who couldn't help but brighten at her tone. “I put ribbons in your hair and we laughed and sang all the way to the airport.” Jesse smiled at the memory. Then she swallowed. Gulp.

“We made it through check-in no problem. In immigration, however, we were told to stand aside. We should've run. Two men took you away screaming. Two others hauled me off to a cell in the basement level of the airport. Nobody told me a cotton-pickin' thing,” Jesse said, and shook her head. “Not that anybody had to. The Guerra family didn't
have to give reasons.” Jesse looked around the table. I took the cigarettes off the arm of a chair and lit one to hand to Jesse. Then I lit one for myself. Isabel put out a hand and I lit another one for her. “Oh, fuck it,” Lynette said, and put out her hand.

Jesse looked at us and burst out laughing. “My God, you guys look like hens in a hurricane. Obviously, I survived.” She brushed a strand of hair from Isabel's face and cupped her cheek. “Obviously, we survived,” she said with a soothing smile.

Then Jesse leaned back in her chair and took a long drag of smoke. “I was there for two weeks,” Jesse said, not articulating the images burned into her memory—shower brawls and eyes swollen shut with blood and tears.

I interrupted Jesse's private movie of recollection with a question for Isabel. “And what happened to you?”

Isabel tried hard to think. “I don't remember the airport,” she said slowly. “But it fits with the few memories of my father and my grandparents in a huge house. I always assumed it was ours.” Isabel shook her head and sobbed. “I'm so sorry, Mom. How could I have traded you for toys and dolls? What kind of daughter am I?”

Jesse grabbed Isabel's hand and squeezed. “You were a little girl. And you didn't know anything that was happening.”

“How did you get out?”

“I didn't. I was inexplicably discharged. Two men took me to a car with black windows. I had no idea what to expect. I thought maybe I would be killed. When we pulled up at my house, I sobbed. Equal parts hope and hopelessness.” Jesse took another deep drag.

“Turns out—hopelessness it was. The men dragged me into the servants' quarters in the basement. They locked me in a windowless room with a tiny bathroom and a mat for a bed. The room had been fitted with a doggie door, so they could slide my meals through with no human conta—”

Lynette gasped. She put her hand to her mouth as tears welled up in her eyes. “Oh my God! I can't take it, Jess.”

Jesse smiled weakly. “Do you want me to stop?” She was asking Isabel.

Isabel's eyes were red and puffy. In a show of false bravado, she took a theatrical drag of her cigarette and smiled. “Oh, let's just do it now. I'm not going through this again later.”

“Amen, baby. Amen to that,” Jesse said, and sighed. “Anyway, you get the idea. They were going to deport me, I think, but wanted to scare the shit out of me first, deter me from ever fighting back. Or maybe there
were
going to kill me or leave me there.” She tried to laugh, but Jesse couldn't help it—she shuddered in the warm air.

“Then—” Jesse stopped. Hot tears erupted and gushed down her cheeks in rivulets. Jesse wiped at them with surprise, but they kept coming.

“Mom?” Isabel asked with a panicked voice. Terrified. Her mother never cried like that, ever. “Jesus, what happened?”

Arshan stood up at the table, looking fierce, ready to fight God himself. A fight he'd been begging for for years.

Jesse took in a gasping breath. “Then your daddy came.”

 

Jesse lay on a thin carpet, facing the wall in a corner. Her hair was greasy. She had on fashionable clothes but they were wrinkled and dirty. She was tapping out the beats to Pink Floyd's “Comfortably Numb” on the wall. Her eyes were glassy. There were scratch marks on her cheeks.

Jesse started to sing the words aloud, because she was hallucinating again. It happened often. She often imagined her father appearing at the door, or imagined she heard Isabel's voice in the night. This time she thought she'd heard footsteps and voices. Jesse clasped her hands over her ears. The noises were getting louder. The door to the room started shaking. Jesse was seized by terror. She shut her eyes and pressed herself against the wall.

When Cesar burst into the room, he was in the middle of yelling, but clapped a hand to his mouth the second he caught sight of Jesse on the floor. Jesse didn't turn. She started to sing.

Cesar quickly shut the door behind him. He made a strange sound like he was choking.

Something in Jesse clicked on. She took her hands from her ears and rolled slowly toward the door. When her eyes fixed on Cesar—beautiful, handsome Cesar in a pristine suit, she covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

Cesar moved to her. He knelt down and reached out a hand.

Jesse scuttled away like a caged animal. She pressed her back into a corner and pulled her knees up in front of her. “Don't you dare,” she snarled, fixing him with rabid eyes.

Cesar's face blanched. He stood up and looked down on her coldly. “I came to get you out as soon as I heard. I didn't know you were here. I was told you'd already been deported.”

The way he said it—proud of himself for not being the one with the key, as if it was okay that she'd been kicked away from her child like a piece of broken glass. Jesse jumped up and ran at him, screeching. She flew at him with her fists, screamed in his face, “Look at me! Look at meeeee! Look at what you did to me, you fucking bastard! I'm Isabel's moth—”

Cesar grabbed her wrists to ward off her attack, but stumbled backward onto the floor, bringing Jesse down on top of him. When he landed, he threw Jesse off and let out a string of insults.

Jesse collapsed in a heap. To no one now, she repeated, “I'm Isabel's mother. I'm her mother. I'm her mother. I'm her mothe—”

Cesar blinked and watched Jesse start to cry again. At first, his face registered nothing but disgust. Slowly he surveyed
the empty room. By the time he made it back around to look at his wife, he was almost the Cesar that Jesse met in New York. The Cesar that made his mother tea while she wept in a dark room. “I'll take care of it.” He swallowed. “Of this. Come on. Get up.”

Jesse didn't rise, but she raised her chin at the softer tone. Cesar averted his eyes in shame. He held out his hand. What choice did she have? Jesse slid her hand into his and stood. She put her head down as she followed him meekly out of the room.

At the door Cesar barked at the guards to back off. He ordered them to sit in the basement and do nothing, forbade them to call his father. Jesse wondered if they would obey.

Cesar led Jesse upstairs to her old bedroom. He sat her on the bed and drew a bath. Jesse didn't move from wherever he led her. When he returned, she let him undress her and walk her to the tub. Jesse's bones stuck out at every angle. When she slipped into the warm water, she let her head sink under. When Cesar had to pull her up for air, he had tears in his eyes.

Cesar washed her hair and wiped her face with a wet cloth. He wrapped her in a clean white towel and laid her on the bed while he picked out fresh clothes. Then, as Jesse watched listlessly, he packed a suitcase. When he put in Isabel's favorite doll, Jesse's heart began to beat again. Her mind realigned with the living. Jesse let out a strangled sob. Thank God. Thank God.

Cesar met her eyes.

“Thank you,” Jesse managed.

At her gratitude, Cesar's face flooded with regret, like dark water breaking through a levee. He came and knelt before the bed, leveling his face with hers. “I am sorry, angelita.” A nickname from a million years ago. “I never—”

“Thought we'd end up like
this
?” Jesse said. The turn of
the phrase struck Jesse as suddenly funny, absurd. She let out a strange, awkward laugh. She was out of practice.

Cesar didn't laugh, he watched her—his wife, clean and shiny again, smiling that gleaming smile of hers. But everything about her seemed off-kilter, and he was like the museum director that spots the imposter Picasso the thieves left behind. But wasn't he the thief? Cesar shook his head. It was too late to say anything more. Too late in too many thousands of ways. He would never be a good husband. He would never be a good father. He had done too many horrible things to ever be forgiven by God, let alone by himself. The only gift he could give his wife and daughter was a oneway ticket away from him and everything his family stood for. Everything he had become.

Cesar stood up and finished packing.