Reflex (13 page)

Before breakfast, they'd put him "in the box" over twenty times. He lost track sometime after number eighteen.

He tried to sleep in the green zone, curling up with the blanket and pillow on the floor, but they reeled in the chains when he did that, pulling him out. He was afraid they'd leave the chains short and turn off the field, a repeat of his last punishment, so for the rest of the activations he stood near the green line swaying in and out of the field until it went off, then stumbled back to bed.

By the end of the night, he wasn't sure if he was actually waking up during each incident. Not that this earned him more rest—it felt like some continuous nightmare.

They left him alone while he ate breakfast, but they started up again when he was showering, leaving him lathered, dripping, and naked in the middle of the green zone. They kept him there a token thirty seconds before he was able to go back and finish. Once dry, it was on again, off again, right through lunch.

He always jumped to the square. He didn't want to take any chances with the newly shortened grace period. Or, to be specific, his body didn't want to. He tried more than once to stroll nonchalantly back to the square, but it was always too hard, and he'd flinch before he could complete the walk, and then he'd find himself standing in the square, bracing from the recoil of the chains.

Operant conditioning. A reflexive response.

Just what they want.

The Burro was in a cluster of other restaurants at the corner of Pennsylvania, where it angled through the intersection of Twentieth and I Street Northwest. The family Ruiz and Porfiro was sitting across the street in a small triangular park.

Sojee waved to them. "Get in line for a table," she said. "I'll fetch them over."

Millie obediently joined the small group waiting outside the door. The couple beside her said, "They're taking names," so she stuck her head in and told a harassed young man "Six, please. Non-smoking."

"Right." He stared at her like she was completely insane but she could tell several people were ready to leave and that tables would be opening up soon. "What name?" he asked.

"Rice," she said.

"I'll call you."

She went back outside. The group was moving across the street with Sojee on one side of the stocky, mustached Porfiro and the Ruizes on the other. The children, two girls in parochial school uniforms, were clinging to their mother, who was trying to get them to walk faster before the light changed.

When they reached the curb, Sojee came ahead and said, quietly, "Kids are scared of me—of my facial twitches."

Millie shook her head and spontaneously hugged the woman. "That's gotta be hard."

Sojee looked surprised and her eyes were suspiciously bright when Millie let go. "I just wanted you to know why they were freakin'. Maybe I should wait out here."

Millie shook her head slightly. "No." She turned to Porfiro, just coming up. "Hello, Porfiro, I'm Millie," she said, holding out her hand.

"Thought so," he said, smiling. He shook her hand and then introduced the Ruizes. "This is Señora Ruiz and her daughters Juanita and Nuk."

Juanita, the older of the two, had lustrous dark hair and dark brown eyes. The two girls' facial structure and eyes were identical, but Nuk's skin was much lighter, and she had pale straw blond hair.

Albino.
Millie smiled and said,
"Hola. ¡Con mucho gusto! Me llamo
Millie."

The children hid behind their mother who nodded slightly and said,
"¿Que soñaste?"

Millie wrinkled her brow and glanced at Porfiro. "I'm afraid my Spanish isn't very good."

"It means—well, it's a greeting where they come from," the man said.

"Ah." She wanted to scream at them,
What do you know about Davy!
She took a sudden shuddering breath of air, exhaled, and tried to smile again at the girls, who were peeping out from behind their mother's dress.

She thanked them for coming.
"Gracias por venir."
She groped for more words. She'd about reached the end of her Spanish from her stay in Costa Rica.
"Yo realmente aprecio su ayuda." I really appreciate your help.
Millie saw understanding in the woman's eyes, and pain.
This woman needed help once,
she decided,
and
didn't
get it.

"Rice—party of six!"

She gestured for Señora Ruiz and her children to precede her. "Vayamos." She rubbed her stomach.
"Tengo hambre."
She pulled Porfiro aside and said quietly, "What happened to their father?"

Porfiro glanced ahead at the woman and her children before looking back at Millie. He made an abbreviated motion, his thumb across his throat, then whispered, "With most of their village. Taken. No bodies found—blood everywhere. She took the girls into the rain forest when the first truck pulled into the village." His mouth twisted. "She'd had a dream."

Millie stared for a second, then nodded. They caught up with the others. Two older men were arguing with the receptionist. "We've been here longer than they have!"

The young man was patiently explaining, "We have large tables and small tables. A large table opened up. I'll have a table for two in just a minute, swear to God." When he was inside, and leading them to their table, Millie heard him mutter to himself, "What an A-two hundred."

Their table was a largish corner booth with bench seats on three sides. Millie slid in and took the far side, which put the girls on one side with their mother at the end, and Porfiro and Sojee on the other side.

With Porfiro's translation skills they got the drink order in fairly quickly. After the waiter left, Millie asked, "I understand you saw my husband." She took one of the photocopied pictures from her purse and unfolded it.

Señora Ruiz looked briefly at the picture and then at the girls who became excited.

"Si, si, nuestro ángel en la noche!"
said Juanita.

Porfiro translated, "Their angel in the night."

"¿Por qué llámelo eso?"
she asked, surprising herself. The Spanish was coming back.
Why call him that?

"Él apareció fuera nada,"
said Nuk.

"Out of nothing, you say." Millie blinked. "When was—
¿Cuándo? ¿Qué día?"

Señora Ruiz said,
"Cinco de Marza. Cerca de medianoche."
She looked at Porfiro.

"Yes. They moved into the building the next day—the sixth."

The very night. The very time.

The drinks arrived and Millie forced herself to be still, to wait, which was tested even more when the waiter wanted to take their food order. She ground her teeth and insisted the family Ruiz order anything they wanted, no matter the cost.

When the waiter had finally departed she fixed her eyes on Señora Ruiz.
"¿Qué usted vio?" What did you see?

"Nada. No estaba allí. Eran."
She tilted her head to her girls.

You weren't there?
She took a deep breath and tried to find that utterly calm, non-threatening place she sought when she did family therapy. She stacked her hands one upon the other, then lowered her head until her chin rested on the back of the hands and her eyes were on the same level as the children's.
"¿Qué vieron ustedes?"

She depended on Porfiro to translate. She couldn't understand what they were saying half the time and even Porfiro had to clarify several times, asking
Señora Ruiz
the meaning of a phrase. Millie was sure several of the phrases the girls used were not Spanish.

The story, told mostly by Juanita, started, "We couldn't sleep. It had been raining and the fire escape was dripping on our box, our refrigerator carton, bap, bap, bap. No one was there and then he was there, like he fell from the sky or grew out of the ground. Nuk gasped and he heard."

"Juanita made the noise."

"Nuk did."

"Juanita."

"Nuk."

Millie smiled.
"No importante. ¿Y entonces?"

"He talked to us in English but we didn't answer. He bent down and light came out of his fingers. He looked at us but he stayed back. He talked to us in Spanish. He wanted to know where our parents were. Because we're not supposed to talk to strangers, I didn't say anything but Nuk did."

"What a lie! I never!"

"You did!"

"Did not!"

Millie said, "What did he learn from whoever it was that talked?"

"That Papa is disappeared and Mama is a janitor. That she works at night. Then he gave us the money and told us to hide it. For a place to live, he said. I didn't want to take it but Nuk said we should."

"I never!"

"He gave us his blessing then and he left."

Millie blinked. "He blessed you?"
That didn't sound like Davy.
"What were his exact words?"

"Buena suerte."

"Ah. How did he leave?"

"He walked away. We could hear his footsteps down the street. We got out of the box, then, and hid the money under the loose brick in the wall of the alley, so no one could take it from us."

Millie was disappointed. It was the sort of thing Davy would do—give the kids the money—and she was glad to hear the story. There was really nothing here that would help, though.

"And you didn't see him after that?"

Both girls looked at each other then back at Millie as if she was being incredibly thick. "When
La Llorona
killed his friend and took him away, we saw that, too."

Millie jaw dropped and she stared. With a manifest effort she closed her mouth and said, "You saw that. That's horrible. That's
wonderful
—don't translate that. What did they mean,
La Llorona."

Porfiro said, "The weeping woman. She's the ghost of a woman who drowned her own children and she takes other children in an effort to replace them. Sometimes they call her Bloody Mary."

"Why did they think it was her? Scratch that. Just ask them to tell me what happened."

The story continued.

"There were gunshots on the other side of the street and we got out of our box and hid behind the trash cans, so to stop the bullets better than the cardboard. A man carrying our angel is running up the street. Others are chasing them. He is shot in the leg and he falls, spilling our angel, whose eyes are open but cannot move.

"The man who is shot reaches into his coat and they shoot him some more. He drops a telephone. He is all over blood.

"Then
La Llorona
comes. Her empty eyes are dripping black blood and she carries a large gun. I was more scared than even the night the paramilitary came to the village. I was afraid that she would kill our angel but she shoots the other man, instead, in the eyes so he won't be able to find her in the afterworld.

"Then the ambulance comes and they put the Angel in and drive away. They left the other man lying on the sidewalk."

Nuk added, "The rain washed his face."

"The different ambulances and the police came then and before they found us, we took our sleeping bags and the money and ran through the alley."

"Different ambulances? How were they different?"

"They didn't have the angel."

"What? Davy—my angel?"

"No. The angel on the door.
Un angelito."

"There was a little angel painted on the door?"

"Yes."

"Which door?"

"On the driver's door. Maybe the other door, too, but we did not see."

"Were there any other differences in the ambulance?"

"Maybe the words on the side but they weren't
Español.
I don't know."

"The colors were the same?"

"Yes. White with an orange stripe." Juanita drew a horizontal line with her finger. "The snake on the stick in the blue..." She dipped her finger in her lemonade and sketched the EMS Star of Life, an X with a vertical line through it on the tabletop. "...
como un asterisco."

A waiter and waitress appeared bearing trays and Millie sat back as their food was presented with the standard mantra: "Careful—the plate is very hot."

Millie was eating the fish tacos, grilled mahi-mahi filets wrapped in a soft corn tortilla and topped with lime-cumin slaw and salsa fresca. The Ruizes were having
carnitas
burritos.

Porfiro said, "They don't eat meat very often. It's an exotic luxury for them—they lived near a lake and occasionally would get fish and they kept chickens for eggs. Usually it's beans and corn. Or sometimes they would eat venison to keep from losing their crops."

Millie felt confused and must have looked it, too, for Porfiro said, "If they don't kill the deer, the deer would eat their crop. And once killed..."

"Ah.
¿Está bueno?"
Millie asked, indicating the food.

"¡Si!"
said Señora Ruiz. She gestured with her fingers, for Millie to try some.

Millie cut a section of her fish taco, transferred it to the edge of the woman's plate, then cut a small chunk off the uneaten end of Señora Ruiz's burrito and popped it in her mouth.

She shook her fingers and said,
"¡Delicioso! Muy sabroso."

Señora Ruiz smiled shyly, then her expression became serious. She began talking again, gesturing to Porfiro to translate for her. "I am glad you have money because it is hard for a woman when her man disappears, but I would understand if you would like the money back that your man gave us. When they took our village we had nothing—they took even the chickens—and it was very hard."

Millie held up her hands.
"Yo no quiero dinero. Tengo bastantes."
Her Spanish failed her and she said to Porfiro, "Tell her I'm just trying to find my husband."

Señora Ruiz nodded vigorously when Porfiro translated.

"I know what that is like, too. I hope God will return him to you. Since you have money, it is to be hoped that they will ransom him. Alas, in our case, they only wanted our land, and if I hadn't gone into the jungle, we would be dead, too."

"Why did you come here—to Washington? Was there no place in Chiapas?"

Señora Ruiz tilted her head to one side, considering. She said something that Porfiro translated as, "I go to my family in Naha." Then she said something that he didn't understand at all. She rephrased it and he said, "God wanted her to come here first. On the way." He shrugged.