Surviving Santiago (4 page)

I remember the
poblaciones
, shantytowns, and the kids who never went to school or who begged for money in front of the shopping centers and cafés where my
mamá
and
abuelos
used to take me.
People shouldn't have to live like that
, Papá used to say—words that could get a person beaten up and arrested on the street or in their home in those days.

Smog hides the mountaintops, but I see two large hills in the middle of the city and a lot of modern high-rise buildings near one of them.

I point to the tallest of the steel-and-glass buildings. “Is this one new?”

“Brand-new. The one under construction will be a condominium.” The booms of a pair of cranes kiss an unfinished building's steel frame—twelve—fifteen stories high.

Even the highways are modern, just like the ones in Chicago or Milwaukee, but most of the cars and buses here are a lot older. Their tailpipes spew smoke.

“This might look more like Madison, from what your father says.” Exiting the highway, my aunt drives along tree-lined streets through a neighborhood of tidy
one- and two-story brick and stucco houses, with a few small apartment buildings. The streets are clean, the yards have trees and flowers, and many of the houses are painted in delicious pastels—blue, green, pink, and yellow. It does look like home, except the houses are closer together, and many, even in this nice neighborhood, have bars on the windows or walls and gates around them.

“Love the colors. Is this where you guys live?” I ask. The apartment building where we lived before Papá's arrest was nowhere near this nice.

“No, but here's where I used to live before your father bought his place.” My aunt waves her hand toward a modern four-story building with lots of balconies.

“I was supposed to be fixing up a house.”

“Your mother said something about it.”

“Yeah, Evan, my stepfather—”

“Don't mention him to your father.” Tía Ileana's voice is hushed.

“I'm not that dumb.” I push my hair from my face. “We're doing a good deed by saving an old house and making the neighborhood nicer.”

“We tear down the old houses when we can,” Tía Ileana says. “And build office and apartment towers to take their place.”

I repeat my stepfather's words. “There's history in an old house. Once it's gone, you never get it back.”

“I like that.” She taps the steering wheel. “But the city's
growing, and the new buildings are safer in earthquakes.”

She turns onto a one-way street so narrow that at home it would be considered an alleyway. She stops in the middle of a block of split-level stucco duplexes with shingle roofs. I'm surprised because most houses here seem to have either corrugated metal or orange terra-cotta roofs.

“This is it,” she says. She takes a gray transmitter from the glove box and opens the automatic gate and garage door for the house on the left side. Metal numbers on a low cement wall read 52-50, and the wrought-iron fence above the wall matches the design and height of the automatic gate. Both sides of the duplex are painted white.

“Bright blue,” I say.

“What?” She cuts the engine.

“We should paint the house bright blue. Like in that other neighborhood.” I think of Petra's plan to turn our house in Madison into an upside-down eggplant.

Tía Ileana laughs. “Are you a bright blue person?”

“Actually, red's my favorite color, but I haven't seen a house painted red so far. Maybe it's against the law. You know, troublemakers' color.”

“Troublemaker,” she repeats with a smile. “That was the one thing your father and mother agreed on about you.” The way she says it makes me think she's cool with the way I am, but then her smile fades. She hits the button to close the garage door. “Your father wanted white.”

Inside, Tía Ileana introduces me to Graciela, who cleans the house and cooks the midday meal. Graciela is short, with a round face and salt-and-pepper hair in a single braid almost to her waist. She gives me a big hug. “Your father is so happy you're here,” she says in Spanish, but with a different accent, like she's from another part of the country.

I'm too stunned to answer. We never had a housekeeper or nanny growing up, except for the eight months we lived with Mamá's family after Papá's arrest. Almost no one has them in Wisconsin—at least no one over the age of two because all the little kids go to preschool. But I remember my
abuelos
offering to pay for a
nana
when Papá drove the taxi, and Mamá telling them we didn't need one because our apartment was too small and Daniel looked out for me. Years later, Daniel told me our parents didn't want anyone coming in and finding out that Papá worked for the resistance.

After we carry my stuff upstairs, Tía Ileana lifts the duffel onto a wooden trunk at the foot of my new bed. I stare at the brightly colored three-dimensional tapestries that decorate my walls. Slightly larger than a picture book, each one has tiny dolls and scraps of fabric in the shape of animals sewn into scenes of the countryside and the mountains.

“I thought you guys didn't believe in servants,” I say to my aunt as soon as Graciela goes downstairs.

“Your father believes in equality. No masters, no servants. So Graciela may cook and keep the house clean, but she and her husband are also people he worked with underground.” Tía Ileana unzips the duffel. “We all agreed it was the best way to go, with both of us working and him not being able to do a lot of things for himself.”

Flooding into my mind is an image of a twisted man with stubble and stringy hair. One of his arms dangles useless, but the other can lash out in an instant.

Then the fog of sixteen hours on an airplane descends upon me. I run the toe of my sneaker along the shiny hardwood floor, thinking that I might fall asleep standing up while Tía Ileana unpacks for me. A couple of open-mouthed yawns, and she gets the message.

C
HAPTER
3

I
awaken to the sound of my father's voice. A little slower than the typical machine-gun pace of Chilean
castellano
, with a slightly odd inflection. I crawl deeper under the covers.

Give him a chance, Tina.

I climb out of bed and pull on my jeans and sweatshirt.

When I reach the top of the stairs, I freeze and stare down at Papá. Thick, wavy hair falls to the middle of his neck, parted so it hangs over his glasses and covers his bad eye. He has a mustache, too—mostly gray like his hair. No beard. He's still skinny, but he looks good. Washed. Dressed. Apparently sober. He has a crooked smile. He beckons to me from the bottom of the stairs. “Come,
m'ija
. Don't be a
coneja
.”

I force my legs to take me downstairs. My arms circle his waist, but his sweater is a force field keeping me from touching his body. My old
papá
would have picked me up, lifted me over his head, and spun me around. But when he came back from prison, he cringed at my touch.

My father grips me tightly with his good arm. The pressure on my shoulders inches me forward, toward
his sweater. It smells like cigarettes. My throat closes, but I squeeze him tighter into a real hug. His body is warm, and through his sweater and shirt I feel his ribs. I hold on to him for a superlong time so he won't keep calling me girl-rabbit because he thinks I'm trying to run away from him.

He lets his arm drop. “Did you have a good flight?”

I step backward and take a deep breath to get rid of the cigarette smell. A black wrist splint pokes out from his shirtsleeve on his bad side. “Yes. I watched two movies on the plane.”

“Which ones?”

“
Big
and
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
.”

“Haven't seen them.”

“
Big
is about a thirteen-year-old kid who wakes up as a thirty-year-old guy, and the other—”

Papá taps my shoulder, interrupting me. “How do you like the house?”

“It's . . . nice.”

“I got one with an extra bedroom so you and your brother could visit.” One side of his mouth turns up while the other side doesn't move at all.

Say you love the house.
I think that's what he wants me to do. But I don't love it. It's cold. White. New.

I draw in my breath. “I love the house, Papá. You did a good job.”

“Come outside. I want to show you the best part.”

He walks stiff-legged through the kitchen into what looks like his office, with bookshelves, a desk, and a daybed piled with papers. He opens a sliding door to a small brick patio with a round metal table painted pea green, two matching chairs, and a brick–and–cinder block barbecue. Beyond the patio is a garden surrounded by a high wall covered with vines. A huge tree in back takes up about a third of the space in the yard. Along the left side wall stretching all the way to the back there's a wire-fenced area like a dog run, but with trees and vines inside.

He unhooks the clasp of the wire fence's gate, reaches into the narrow opening, and comes out with a small parrot on his finger. “Pablo, this is Tina,” he says to the bird. And to me, “Do you want to hold him?”

“Will he bite?” I ask. Papá shakes his head, so I hold out my finger. The bird hops on and stares at me with yellow eyes. His claws feel like two sticks wrapped around my fingers. I stroke the dark gray feathers on his back. “How'd you get him?”

“I rescued him. His wing was dislocated, so he can't fly.” Papá rests his hand on my shoulder. “I have another one named Víctor. Graciela's husband brought him to me last month because he had chewed part of his foot off. I think he can still perch, but he doesn't trust me yet.”

“Does that one fly?”

“Yes,” Papá says.

“Why'd he chew his foot off?”

“He could have injured the foot or got it caught. Or he could have been abused. These birds are very sensitive, and if they're miserable, they harm themselves.” Papá takes Pablo from me and holds him at eye level. “This one plucked out all his feathers. But they grew back, didn't they, Pablo?” He stands still for a while as if waiting for a response, sets the bird on a branch inside the cage, and closes the wire door.

“Remember when you used to fix our broken toys?” I ask.

He nods. “But birds aren't toys,
m'ija
. They're living things. It's different.”

I stare at Pablo and imagine him
desplomado
. Featherless.

Back inside, Papá washes his hands, sits at the head of the table, and pours himself a glass of mineral water. That must be some kind of signal, because my aunt sits on his left. I wash my hands like he tells me to and take the chair opposite hers, where Graciela has set a place for me.

“How's your brother?” he asks me.

You mean, the favorite? The one who worked with you at the radio station all last summer?
But I don't want to make Papá mad on the very first day. And I have other methods. I give my father a sly smile. “Fine. But he brought his backpack to the wedding. It was truly embarrassing.”

Tía Ileana's mouth opens wide before she covers it with her hand. Still, a giggle escapes. Papá closes his eyes and laughs out loud.

Score one point for the little sister.

Papá stops laughing and leans toward me, his good arm on the table. “Did your mother send the pills?”

“Yes. I'll get them. They're upstairs in my bag.” I stand.

Papá motions for me to sit. “In my house, we don't get up and walk around during meals.”

The pills. That's why Daniel had the backpack. Take the sister's point away.

Papá digs into his
pastel de choclo
. I dismantle mine—pile the ground corn on one side, mash the potatoes with my fork, push the olives around the plate, and nibble the ground beef and hard-boiled eggs.

For the rest of the meal I keep my mouth shut while my father and aunt discuss the election in October and the candidate that he just interviewed on his radio show. After dessert—vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup—Papá stands, rubs his stomach, and stretches. “
Bueno
, back to work,” he says, then asks Tía Ileana for a ride.