Something Fierce (31 page)

The military apparatus and the secret police were still intact in Argentina, and Alfonsín's transgression was to allow trials for crimes against humanity, which had been ongoing for two years. February had been the deadline for survivors to charge their torturers, causing a mad scramble of filings in which another 450 current military officers had been named. The Easter coup was quashed, but the cost of that victory was still to be revealed.

“HURRY! GO MILK the cow!” my grandmother ordered.

She stood in the doorway of her yellow wooden house, hands on her hips, mischief in her eyes. I waded through two feet of water that covered the sidewalk, resigned to the fact that I'd just ruined a pair of shoes it would take me a year to pay off. The delivery boy from the general store had ridden his bike through the flooded streets, carrying my suitcase in his basket. It was early winter, and a third of Chile was under water because of torrential storms. Every year it was the same story: floods, mass evacuations, people in the shantytowns left to stand shivering on the side of the road with their babies in their arms. The bus that had brought me to Limache from Santiago had passed countless families on the shoulders of the highway, an expanse of water behind them, bundles at their feet. They stood on the side of the road because there was nowhere else for them to go. They weren't waiting for a bus, because they couldn't have afforded the fare. They simply stood and waited for something—anything—as their lips turned purple from the cold and their babies trembled in their wet woollen clothes.

My grandmother handed a bunch of coins to the grocery boy and winked. I wrapped my arms around her, kissing her cheeks and the top of her head.

“Abuelita! What are you talking about? You have a cow now?”

“Shhh! Don't yell! You might spook it. The cow is not mine. It belongs to someone from up the road. All the orchards are flooded, and the fences came down, and the cow's confused. It's been standing in the middle of my orchard for a day now, mooing away. I tried to milk it, but the water reaches up to my hips. The bucket's in the back. You go do it.”

“Abuelita, I've never milked a cow, and it's not like I'm going to start now.”

“Not so loud. We're taking its milk, so it shouldn't be advertised.”

I waded around to the back of the house. Sure enough, there was a lone cow mooing softly in the middle of the water. My grandmother appeared at the back door, gesturing for me to get going.

“Abuelita, that cow will knock me over with a good swift kick, and then lean on me till I drown. Forget it. Besides, I've been travelling for forty-eight hours to get here. My travel money ran out way back in the south, and I haven't eaten for twenty-four hours. I need a hot cup of tea with condensed milk.”

“All right, come in. The witches will keep us company,” my grandmother said.

Her dining room table had become her work area, with my grandfather gone. Sure enough, we drank our tea among witches. There were dozens of them. Witches on brooms, witches on chairs, witches on bicycles, witches wearing black hats and red lace stockings.

“Why witches, Abuelita?”

“Because witches are illegal. That's a good enough reason for me.”

Each time I'd come to Chile to make a delivery, after that first time with Alejandro, I'd stayed on for a few days with my grandmother. This was my fourth venture inside. Once I was over the border, I'd press myself against the window of the bus and devour that long, skinny country with my eyes. But standing in line as a lifesized portrait of Pinochet stared down at me, waiting in the loaded silence punctuated by the stomping of military boots, a bark here, an order there, sent me into a free fall of fear. I'd heard that the life expectancy of a person who starts doing border crossings was only two years. That knowledge could eat me alive, I realized, causing me to break and do something stupid, or it could spur me to refine my skills. So even though I was twenty pounds underweight, completely frigid (Alejandro had given up reaching for me at night) and suffering from dizzy spells, I'd worked hard to master the skill of killing my heart whenever I crossed the border. First I conjured Juan's voice, ordering me to remember why I was doing this, reminding me that all experience was good, precious, unforgettable. Then I'd invoke the machete-wielding man in Coroico slicing the bull's throat and yanking out its heart. Sometimes I also conjured up my three great-aunts, who'd made their fortune smuggling goods across this very line. By the time I reached the wicket to present my passport, my pupils were shrunken and my heart left behind, a squashed tomato on the floor. I'd answer the border guard's questions with a steady hand and a steadier gaze. Then I'd be let through, with whatever goods I'd wrapped and sewn into the lining of my new suitcase. As I rode through the Andes, I'd will my heart to enter my body again, and with it would come the release of the breath I'd been holding for the last two hours. If my great-aunts had known they were an inspiration for their militant niece, they'd have had to increase their dosage of the tranquilizers they loved to pop.

My grandmother was looking at me sternly. “I want to tell you that whatever it is you're doing, it's not going to work.”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Abuelita.” I took a sip of my tea and tried to get warm, a project that usually took all winter.

“We both know what I'm talking about, and I'm telling you it's not going to work. Why? Because we live in a country of cowards.”

“Abuelita—”

“Don't interrupt me. In what world is it okay for people to watch two youngsters being beaten, doused with gasoline and set on fire? First the soldiers beat them, and people watch. Then the soldiers take their half-conscious bodies to a side road and beat them some more, while people pull their curtains and cower in their houses. Then the soldiers set them on fire, and people dive onto their bathroom floors. It makes me sick to be a part of this.”

“Abuelita, people are terrified.”

“I don't care. If every one of those households had gone outside and defended those children with whatever they had, any weapon, even if it was just a chair, and if every household did that every time something like this happened, then I'd say to you: go ahead, granddaughter, continue doing what you're doing, because we stand a chance. But here, here in this cursed country, there's no chance of anything. You tell me people are scared? Well, let me tell you something: there's nothing more dangerous than the poison of fear. I've seen fear turn people into informers, monsters, turning in their own friends and neighbours. You're dealing with a country sick with fear, Nieta, and I wish I could say that what you're doing is going to work, but it isn't, it isn't.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

She pulled out her hanky and wiped her eyes. I stared straight ahead. She grabbed one of her half-made witches, took up a toothpick and started to do some fine work on the face.

“Having said that, God knows if I was young I'd be doing what you're doing. Being old and tired, all I can do is go outside during the blackouts and bang my pots and pans. Did you know I'm the only one on this street who does it? Because of Pinochet's fortress on the corner, and the secret police agents who live next door. When a fat old woman is the only one who's not afraid to make some noise, when the youth of this country have been broken down to that point, then there's nothing to be done. After the blackout I'll be trimming the flowers out front and the neighbours will pass, saying, ‘I heard your pots and pans last night, Señora Carmen.' I look them right in the eye and say, ‘Yes, and where were your pots and pans, you coward? Aren't you ashamed of yourself?' Then I get back to my camellias. They just drop their heads and walk a little faster.”

The assassination attempt on Pinochet might have failed, but now, six months into 1987, the lid seemed to be coming off the country. The fact that it was possible to get that close to the strongman himself gave people courage and hope. I'd been a witness to this on the buses I'd taken to get to Limache. Shockingly, many of the passengers had spoken loudly against the dictatorship. I'd kept my arms crossed and my mouth shut. The last thing I wanted was for our bus to be intercepted.

“But, Abuelita, people are starting to speak up.”

“They can speak all they want, Nieta, but it's a long way from speaking to doing. To think that unspeakable son of a bitch is claiming our patron saint as his saviour.”

My grandmother took her new witch on a little spin through the air.

“What do you mean?”

“Haven't you heard what he's saying about the Virgin Carmen, the patron saint of Chile? The one you and your mother and I are all named after? The one who protects our borders? According to Pinocchio, the Virgin Carmen protected him from being killed. He's shown the bulletproof glass on TV countless times. He claims that the gunfire created the shape of the Virgin on his window, that she came to him in the form of bullets that were never meant to penetrate his flesh. He loves to go on about his devout Catholicism, but even the Pope agreed to come to Chile only on the condition that Pinocchio get rid of the exile blacklist. I check that list in the newspaper. It's down to five hundred now, and both your mother and your uncle are still on it. Their names are published for all to see, so everyone can know that they're considered terrorists, that they're not allowed into their own country. But you'll see, you'll see. As soon as their names are off, any day now, my children will come back, and I'll throw a party for them right here in this house, and I'll show the neighbours that my children are good. My children are good.”

I stayed with her for a week. She fed me, massaged my back with cologne, prepared hot water bottles, washed and ironed my clothes and let me lie in bed all day reading my parents' old books. I devoured Hemingway's
A Moveable Feast
and Galeano's
Days and Nights of Love and War
. My grandmother's house was a capsule, a place where my mind roamed and I laughed in my sleep. I fantasized about the day I'd live there again, when Chile was free.

The day I left, my grandmother waved to me from her front door. I stood up straight, locked my jaw and headed down the street to catch a bus back to Santiago. When I looked back, she mouthed the words “Be careful.”

Her yellow house framed her round body. The camellia bush shone in the winter sun, and my grandmother's face collapsed.

Go back there, I thought. Go back there and live with her forever. Just turn around. Go back to the house where the Terror doesn't exist. But that wasn't what I'd signed on for. And my grandmother had said if she were my age, she'd be doing what I was. I certainly couldn't let her down.

25

I
SCANNED THE CROWD as I stepped off the bus, but nobody looked familiar.

I “Cousin?”

“Yes?”

“It's me, Chelito.”

He placed his hand on my forearm. I blinked. This bespectacled geek was the boy I'd worshipped? I tried to find the god behind the winter coat as we climbed into a taxi.

“I'm wearing this tuque in your honour.”

I giggled at the pompom on top of his head.

“A classmate of mine is a returnee from Montreal, and he gave it to me.”

It was seven years since the summer I'd discovered love. Now I was a married nineteen-year-old English teacher living an underground life. The Cousin was a twenty-three-year-old playboy, going to law school at the University of Concepción, which I knew was a hotbed of resistance activities.

We drove along the wet streets of Puerto Montt. The place was famous for its fish market, which offered an array of delicacies fresh from the sea. I took in the wooden houses, the children in their navy-blue school uniforms, the dark, Mapuche-blooded Chileans striding along the glistening sidewalks in muddy boots. Uncle Carlos and Aunt Vicky had moved to this southern port town, a twelve-hour bus ride from Santiago, and I'd decided to visit them before leaving the country.

“Here she is! A woman now!”

Aunt Vicky opened the door to a large pink house overlooking the ocean. She had aged, and all remnants of the nouveau riche lady from Concepción were gone. Her face was free of makeup, and an apron was tied around her waist.

“I just finished waxing the floors, so you'll have to excuse the smell. But breakfast is on the table.”

Homemade bread and a steaming cup of tea in English china awaited. Last time I'd seen this family, they'd defended Chile's “economic miracle.” But they'd lost everything in the 1982 crash, and now they were in debt up to their ears. It was the typical story of Chile's new middle class. There were no more maids, no more fancy parties, exclusive clubs or private schools. They lived in a rundown rented house with only the wood stove in the kitchen to keep them warm. My uncle, my grandmother had told me, was now an underpaid accountant in a company that exported seafood to Japan. A purported aphrodisiac from these shores called “el loco” (when under the influence, you were said to be suffering from “loco fever”) sold like hotcakes in Tokyo. My cousin Elena was attending secretarial school, and her brother Mario, an alternative musician in Santiago, did six-month stints on commercial fishing boats. The youngest, Gastón, was completing his final year of high school.