Do They Know I'm Running? (23 page)

Ever since, the Palestinian had hammered away at Lupe.

—
Let me tell you something: They will find your family if you try to run. You want them to die? Want me to tell you how it will happen?

—
You’ve made your point
, Roque said, aware he was broadcasting his attraction by taking up her defense. She just lay there, eyes closed, ignoring them both. Tío Faustino wisely had gone outside and was now stretched out beneath the Corolla’s hood, working by flashlight as he tightened the belts.—
Let her rest
.

Samir, as always, ignored him.—
Whatever you’ve done, you must pay the price yourself
.

—
Who says she did anything?

Samir chuckled.—
You’re a child. Maybe the same age as her, but you’re the child
.

—
Stop, enough, my God
. She rose up on one elbow, the bag of ice sliding off her face onto the floor with a damp thud. The battered eye remained dark with bruising, the purple skin glistening from the heparin cream. The swelling had gone down. Her lip looked normal too, except for a scab.—
Take it somewhere else, you two. I want to sleep
.

Roque studied her face as she fumbled for her ice. He hoped this was the last of Lonely’s abuse, though who knew what damage a freak like that could inflict from a distance.

—
You want to sleep?
Samir couldn’t help himself, couldn’t hold his tongue.—
Let me tell you something. My wife’s brothers tried to save her, like our young friend here dreams of saving you, but what did they accomplish? Refugee camp, it’s a prison. And where can they go from there, back to Iraq? Palestinians have to register with the Ministry of the Interior every month, which is just signing up to be killed. Bodies get left out in the street, some with their faces
burned away by acid, some with no hands. Just before I left, the Jaish al Mahdi stormed into this tiny radio station. All ten people who worked there, men and women both, were dragged out into the street and shot. I saw this happen with my own eyes. I watched those poor people, I knew their names, I saw them beg for their lives. So no, my wife, her brothers, they cannot return to Baghdad. And they cannot work in Syria, not legally. They’ve all but exhausted their savings. Fatima has to choose between medicine or food
.

He clutched his small cloth bag to his chest, rocking as he spoke.

—
Know what Fatima does for money? She fasts. Yes. She has an engineering degree—think about that, an Arab woman with an engineering degree—but she fasts. She does this for rich people, men and women who can’t be bothered to honor the traditions on their own. So they hire a surrogate, they hire my wife. They pay her $60 per month for a sick relative, a son who has strayed with an evil woman, a brother who has lost his business. Some just don’t want to observe the Ramadan fast, so they hire Fatima to do it for them. Sometimes Shatha, my daughter, she does the fasting, because her mother is too weak. Here, I will show you a picture
.

He dug into his bag, withdrew a photograph, held it out for her to take, but Lupe didn’t move. Finally, to save the man embarrassment, Roque reached out for it. It was a close-up, just the two of them, mother and child, faces filling the frame, hair unveiled, raven-black and long, both of them smiling, cheek to cheek—same dimples, same eyes, same lips. He couldn’t see much resemblance with the father, thought better of saying so. He tried to hand the picture back but Samir merely clutched his bag tighter.

—
There is no school for Shatha. Fatima is sick from the lack of food, the lack of sleep, the despondency. But the only alternative is to become a prostitute
.

—
And that would kill you, wouldn’t it?
Lupe spoke without lifting her head, holding the ice bag in one hand, wagging a
knowing finger with the other.—
To think your dear wife’s fucking other men, sucking their Arab cocks, so your daughter can eat
.

Samir shook his head with an almost boyish violence.—
She understands honor
.

—
She understands hunger
.

—
And it is the Americans, the contractors, who use the prostitutes
.

—
You use prostitutes. Admit it, Turco
.

His sunken eyes flared.—
I have never
—

—
Don’t worry, your wife understands. She understands her husband is far away and men are men. She’s on her own, like women everywhere
.

—
I have never used prostitutes. Never. And Fatima is not alone! All of this, this struggle to reach America, it’s for her
.

—
America?
Lupe resettled her weight, nudging herself onto her back with an indulgent moan, as though self-pity was the only pleasure left.—
We’re all prostitutes in America
.

—
You are wrong! You are wrong. I realize these men you fell in with, they have made you a slave. Yes, you will have to degrade yourself, sell yourself to buy your way out of their grip. You will have to endure much and suffer greatly. But you can do it. You are young. You are not the only one facing such things
.

—
Like your wife?

—
Someday you will get to America and there things change. I’m not stupid, I know dreams are for children. Yes, there is little hope in the world. But without America, there is none. Despite everything, you will have a chance
.

At last she leaned up a little, meeting his eyes.—
What makes you think I’ll live long enough to have a chance?

—
You are too young to be so bitter
.

—
And you’re too old not to realize your wife is fucking strangers to stay alive
.

—
She’s not! She can’t. You don’t understand how it is. Her brothers would kill her
.

—
She’ll tell them she’s out cleaning houses. Like Latinas do in the States. Like I said, in America
—

Samir refused to hear more. He shot to his feet and turned away.—
I pity you. Despite all I and my family have endured, I have not despaired. I am a father, I can’t give up hope. You need to do the same. Otherwise, why not just surrender to death and the devil?

—
You don’t want me to die. I die, you don’t make it to America. Like it or not, all the hope in the world won’t save you without me
.

This last bit was said to Samir’s back, he’d already fled. She watched the empty doorway for a moment, then resettled herself, easing onto her side with another wincing moan, facing away from Roque.—
God, I thought he’d never leave
.

It was the first thing he could recall her saying to him, even during their recording session back in La Chacra. He could think of nothing to say in return, preferring instead to study the hollow of her back where her blouse rode up. Wiping the lather of sweat off his face, he glanced up at the clock: half past ten. Tío Faustino and Samir would head off soon. Several feet below the clock, the lizard had yet to budge.

—
Stop looking at my ass
.

He flinched at the sound of her voice.—
I’m not
—

The bag of ice sloshed.—
Not what?

—
I’m not playing this game. You want to think all men are alike, we’re nothing but dogs—eat it, fuck it or piss on it. Be my guest. But my uncle’s not like that. I’m not like that
.

She huffed, glancing over her shoulder with her good eye.—
What’s wrong with my ass?

He heard an unfamiliar voice coming from outside.—
Excuse me
, he said, getting up from the floor to head out toward the sound, leaving Lupe and the lizard to themselves.

The stranger looked nothing like Roque had imagined. He wore jeans, a rugby shirt, a denim jacket way too large, plus a Dodger’s cap, blue again, his only nod to MS-13. His name, Roque gathered from the conversation, was Humilde.

Samir slung his bag at his hip, the shoulder strap crossing his chest. Tío Faustino prepared to head off with nothing but the clothes on his back. He wrapped his arms around Roque in a farewell embrace. “We’ll see each other tomorrow. Don’t worry.” Slapping Roque’s back, he waited for the others to drift out of earshot before adding in a whisper: “I cannot live with my conscience, knowing what that girl in there has facing her at the end of this trip.” He backed away, taking Roque’s face in his hands, a shocking gesture, overly tender, except the cast of his eye was calculating, not affectionate. “We have to think of something, you and I. The problem will be El Turco.”

GODO WATCHED THE CLOCK, WAITING UNTIL TÍA LUCHA HAD
been gone a full hour, meaning she’d be safely chained to the cash register, mid-shift, stuck till midnight, no likelihood she’d circle back home for anything. He pushed open her bedroom door, crossed to her dresser, sat on the edge of the bed. He wondered how lonely she was, not having slept with Tío Faustino for several weeks now. There was no way to know, of course. Not the kind of thing she’d discuss.

Chancing the mirror, he suffered the usual jolt, his moonscape face. Speaking of lonesome beds, he thought. Maybe, someday, I’ll find myself a blind girl.

Leaning down, he tugged open the bottom dresser drawer. Tía Lucha’s underwear trended toward the functional, boxy white panties, thick-foamed bras. He lifted the soft prim stacks one by one, moving them to the bedspread, then reached back in for the thing he wanted. Setting the worn manila envelope in his lap, he gingerly undid the clasp. Postcards and letters tumbled out, sent from El Salvador, people he’d never met writing about stuff he knew nothing about. It was the photos he wanted, the old ones, some brittle to the touch, some worn so smooth from handling they felt like cloth.

The ritual was always the same but no less intimate for that. He liked to begin with the oldest, one particular favorite—here it was—picturing Lucha with her little sister Graciela, his mother, in their school uniforms. They stood outside the family
home, a modest cinder-block house with a clay tile roof in the village of San Pedro Nonualco. A man in a harlequin costume was holding a macaw for the girls to pet, the two sisters so unalike, Lucha with her pinched face, her sour wince, pigtails so tightly braided they looked like they hurt, Graciela with her candy-red cheeks and plummy eyes, her gap-toothed smile, her wooly black tangles.

In another picture they walked hand in hand in crisp white dresses down a meandering cobblestone street. Other girls and boys marched along with them, everyone dressed for First Communion, heading toward the colonial-era bell tower. Lucha dragged Graciela along, the older sister bulling ahead while the younger lagged behind, reaching out to touch the fierce red blossoms of a fire tree.

He moved on to the teenage years, when his mother dropped her baby fat, though not all of it, slimming down here, filling out there. Was he to feel ashamed or proud that his mother’s image aroused him? Again, the contrast with her older sister practically reached out to slap you, Lucha with her twiggy shoulders and knobby wrists, the gaunt face, eyes dark and deep and sullen. But Graciela’s were shiny and full and wicked. Her smile was ripe, like an orange slice. She cocked her hip just so, suggesting the hunger of a born tease. Where were they? Godo liked to imagine it the doorway to a secret lair, a place where the teenagers hid away to talk in the dark about movies, smoke, touch each other, but it was probably just the neighborhood
tienda
, selling bread and sodas and aspirin.

There was a gap then, seven years or so, no images with the savagery of the war for backdrop, nothing from the feverish trek to America. When his mother appeared again, she was holding her newborn son, Godofredo, swaddled in fleece, named for a maternal uncle. She looked weary, anemic, but strangely happy, or at least relieved. No pictures of the father.

Now came the snapshots he lived for. He was just a kid in them, a wolf-eyed scrap clinging to his mother’s hand or nuzzled in her arms, their cheeks pressed close, her hair cascading down both their faces. He sometimes believed he could smell the floral tang of her shampoo, the talcum scent of her skin. Worry bags darkened both eyes, her smile wan, her skin pasty. She’d put on weight again. The lonesome grind of exile—one took comfort where one could, and in America food was easy, unlike love. Still, to Godo, she resembled perfection.

Last, the pictures of her pregnant with Roque, the killer innocent,
hijo del amor
. Again, no snaps of a dad. She offered the camera a brave smile, hand poised on the swollen belly like a last regret. I would have saved you if I could, Godo thought, and as those words lingered in his mind Happy walked in, finding him on the bed, Tía Lucha’s underthings stacked beside him, a snapshot in his trembling hand.

To his credit, Happy declined to express surprise or disgust. Godo was too lost in grief to feel ashamed. They regarded each other guardedly, almost kindly.

Finally, Happy said, “I need to tell you something.”

That seemed fair, Godo thought, wiping his face. One secret deserves another. He tucked the pictures back into the envelope, which he then returned to its spot at the bottom of the drawer. After carefully replacing the undergarments, he said, “Let’s not talk in here,” smoothing out the bedcover as he rose to leave.