When Tito Loved Clara (14 page)

Before Clara had finished opening all the unread messages in her inbox, Lauren Wakefield, a fifth-year associate and one of Clara's best friends at the firm, appeared in the library. She was a petite blond fireplug who wore suits in solid colors and heels that made the muscles of her calves look as hard and defined as a Tour de France cyclist's.

“How was your day off?” she said. “How'd it go with your sister?”

Clara rolled her eyes. “Crazy,” she said. “Lots of family drama. How was it here?”

“It's always a little nuts when you're not around,” said Lauren. “Everyone acts as if they suddenly forgot how to use Martindale or Lexis.”

“I know. You should see some of the requests I got.” Clara laughed.

“So, you want to get some lunch later?” Lauren asked.

“Sure,” said Clara. It was good to be back at work, she realized, work, where she knew how to answer the questions that came to her. That was the pleasure of librarianship—finding answers,
solving problems, sending people away happy. The problems in her private life seemed harder to solve. There were no databases or reference books to help her figure those things out.

C
LARA HAD BEEN
born in the town of La Isabela, not far from Santo Domingo. When she was three, her parents left the Dominican Republic to seek their fortunes in New York. Clara stayed behind in the care of her
abuelo
and
abuela
. New York, for her, was a distant and mysterious place, like heaven or the moon. From New York, money sometimes made its way to La Isabela. From New York there was sometimes a letter. Now and then, a relative would visit from New York with word of her parents and, maybe, a gift.

She and her grandparents lived in a three-room wooden farm-house with a galvanized steel roof and no glass in the windows—only shutters to keep the winds out during hurricane season. This was the house where her mother had grown up; from this house her mother had gone out one night and met her father at a dance. In this house, a little more than a year later, Clara had been born. The farm grew bananas and mangos. There were a few cows and a pen of pigs down the hill behind the house. There were chickens and a manic, jealous rooster that her grandfather had named Fidel.

Her father reappeared at the farm one day when Clara was six. Her grandmother was in town at the
botanica
and her grandfather was in the fields working. Clara was outside the house, killing salamanders. She picked them up by the tail and whipped their heads against the wall.
Whap!
went their little heads. Sometimes she had to do it more than once to kill them. When the salamander was dead, she tossed it into the grass for the dogs. Years later, returning to visit the farm from New York, the sight of a salamander would make her scream.

A man came walking down from the road toward the house.
He wore new clothes and shiny shoes. He was tall and thin. He seemed familiar, but she did not recognize him right away. “Clara,
mi amor,
” he said.

She looked up at him. A salamander wiggled in her hand. He had high cheekbones, small eyes, and pockmarked skin. He took off his Panama hat and showed a chicken scratch of tight curls on his head.

“
Es Papi,
” he said. Without saying a word, she dropped the salamander and went into the house and found the framed photograph of her parents on their wedding day. She brought the photograph out and held it up beside his face.

“Papi!” she said.

“
Sí!
” he said, laughing.

“Where's Mami?” she asked, looking back at the photograph. She was happy to see her father, but it was her mother—or the idea of her mother—that she missed the most.

“She's in New York.” He glanced at the fields behind the house and then back at the road from which he had come. “Do you want to go to Santo Domingo with me,
mi corazón
? I have a car.”

She said yes and, holding hands, they walked out to the road where his car was parked. She would not see the farm again until she was in college.

“Where are we going, Papi?” she asked him.

“Shopping,” he said, unlocking the door. “Wouldn't you like some new clothes,
amorcita
?” He spoke softly.

Clara nodded. “Yes, Papi.”

They drove into Santo Domingo. She sat in the front passenger seat. Her little body bounced around on the seat as her father maneuvered through the traffic on the unlined, potholed roads. Her eyes barely reached the bottom of the window. She looked up at the passing streets, the grimy facades of buildings, the undersides of trees, the sky—like looking up the city's skirt.

“Can Mami come and meet us in Santo Domingo?” she asked.

“No,
mi amor,
” he said. “But maybe you would like to go to New York with me to see her?”

“Yes, Papi!” she said. “Please.”

“Good,” he said. “We will go to New York. But first you need some clothes.”

They parked and walked into a pedestrian shopping area lined with stores and food vendors. In store after store, they were fawned over by female clerks—a father buying clothes for his daughter. He bought her a brown dress with yellow ducks on the bodice; he bought her a pair of long pants made out of a thick, ribbed material she had never seen before; he bought her new underwear; he bought her a pink cotton cardigan; he bought her a pair of white tights, which looked like two squashed, milky snakes to her; he bought her a pair of shoes with hard, smooth leather soles; he bought her a raincoat made of a slick, slippery cloth. The last item of new clothing she had owned was her baptismal dress, a gift from her father's mother. Everything else she had worn in her life had been worn by someone else before her.

“Papi, you have money?” she asked. Money was something her grandparents almost never had but the supply of bills in her father's wallet seemed endless.

“Yes, Clara. I have money.”

“New York money?”

He smiled. “Yes,
mija.
New York money.”

They had dinner in a restaurant and while they were eating a man came up to the table. The man was fat and not as tall as her father. He had longer hair, a tangled black corona around his head. He was introduced as Tío Miguel.

“I want to go back to see
mi abuelitos,
” Clara said.

“I thought you wanted to come to New York.”

“No,” she said.

“Don't you want to see your mother?”

“Yes, but we need to tell Abuelo and Abuela.”

“We are going to New York, Clara.”

“No, Papi. I don't want—”

He slapped her.
Whap!
went his hand against her face. Now she knew what the salamanders felt. She vowed never to do that to them again—a vow she would keep. Nobody in the restaurant paid any attention to her father striking her; it was just a man disciplining his child. The blow rang in her ears and silenced her. She was terrified of saying the wrong thing and getting slapped again. She would wait until she saw her mother and everything would be fine then.

From the restaurant, they went back to the car. It was getting dark. Tío Miguel drove now, taking them along a road that ran beside the sea to the airport. The terminal was brightly lit and full of people. Her father led her into the men's room, where the smell of shit made her gag. Men, zipping their flies and turning away from the urinals, were startled to see a girl in the room. They gave an embarrassed smirk and left without washing their hands. In the stall, her father flushed away the stew of paper and feces in the toilet and told her to take off what she was wearing—a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. “
Que flaquita!
” he said, looking at her. She stood there, naked and trembling, as he dug among the bags. The tiles felt cold against her feet. Piece by piece, he made her put on almost everything they'd bought that afternoon. “It is cold in New York,” he explained.

She had said nothing since he slapped her and she said nothing now.

“Come, Clara. Don't be that way.”

“Mami,” she whispered.

“You'll see your mami soon,” he said.

When they came out of the men's room, Tío Miguel said good-bye to them, hugging her father and kissing her on the head. She never saw him again and would never know who Tío Miguel actually was.

Her father had only a small suitcase and she had nothing—he
had thrown her old clothes into the trash in the men's room. They waited in line at the ticket counter and Clara started to feel overheated. She took off the raincoat and the cardigan. It was inconceivable to her that New York was cold enough that she would need to wear both. The ticket agent took her father's suitcase and put it on a baggage cart behind the counter. They crossed the terminal to a doorway where a man in a uniform sat behind a raised desk. Her father handed the man a small red book. The man looked through the book, flipping the pages rapidly. Then he stopped. Inside the book, like a patch of mold, was a wad of folded New York money. She saw it for only a second before it vanished into the man's palm. The man stood up and peered over the desk, laying the book flat, as he inspected her. Clara saw that the book was open to a page with her photograph. She had not seen her father in three years. Where did that photograph come from? It made her father seem more powerful and more mysterious than before. No words were exchanged. The man behind the desk nodded and handed the book back to her father.

C
LARA FELL ASLEEP
during the flight and missed the descent into the city. She did not see the crisscross of lighted streets, the darkened parks burnished with week-old snow. She was woken by her father shaking her shoulder as the plane came in for its landing. Still groggy, she walked up the jetway into Kennedy Airport. They waited in a long line to stand before a judge, who looked at her picture in her father's book and asked him questions in English. This time there was no New York money in the book. For a moment, Clara thought they might be sent back. The judge looked down at her from his podium, nodded, and—
boom—
delivered his stamp into the book.

“Welcome to New York, Clara,” her father said.

A man was waiting for them in the terminal—a squat, burly Dominican man who was introduced as Don Felix.

“Where is Mami?” she asked, looking up at her father.

“At home. We are going now.”

“
Pobre muchacha,
” said Don Felix, bending down to look at her. “You won't like New York at first. It's a hard place. But one day you will thank your father for bringing you.”

Don Felix told them to wait by the revolving door while he went to get the car. Clara looked out into the night, the cabs and buses pulling up and departing, everyone dressed in heavy coats. They had not even left the airport building and she was already feeling cold. The draft came in from the revolving door and reached up the insides of her pants with its icy fingers. She felt like she was standing in a shallow, cold bath. When Don Felix's little car pulled up to the curb, she and her father walked out of the airport through the revolving door and the March wind struck her body. She had never felt cold with such force. It was like having a fever. All strength left her.

“
Ven,
Clara,” said her father, and took her by the hand again and pulled her across the pavement into the car's frigid vinyl backseat.

Don Felix and her father talked as they drove. She did not listen to what they said. She was too busy looking out the window. The car was taking her to see her mother! But the drive never seemed to end. Traffic slowed. There was always another road with more cars, more signs. Arrows pointing this way and that. At last, they were on a bridge and Clara could see the row of tall buildings with their lights on—a wall of lighted boxes reflected on the water. They came off the bridge and drove along the river. There was less traffic now and Don Felix was driving fast. The car had finally warmed up inside and she was feeling sleepy again. Then the highway ended and they were driving down a congested street. She looked out the window and saw a Dominican flag above the door of a bodega. There was a Dominican man waiting at the corner while his dog squatted. The signs were in Spanish. She recognized some of the words—
comida, cambio, banco.
They went through a traffic light and stopped.

“Here we are, Clara,” said her father. “This is your home.”

They had parked in front of a house that looked like it was still being built. There was an enormous metal trash container in the driveway, and the steps were made out of wooden planks on cement blocks. Across the street, dark as a jungle, was a park. On this side of the street, rising up a gentle slope were other houses in better condition than the one they'd stopped in front of.

“How long do you think it's going to take to fix the place up?” asked Don Felix, gesturing out the window.

“A year,” said her father. “Maybe two. Come, Clara. Say goodnight to Don Felix.”

Clara did as she was told.

Don Felix smiled at her. “I live just there, a couple of blocks,” he said, pointing up the street. “I have a boy, your age. I hope you will come and meet him.”

Her father opened his door and went to the trunk of the car, where he retrieved his small suitcase. Don Felix was still looking at her, as if he wanted to say more. The door beside Clara opened and her father said, “
Vámonos.
” They climbed the planks, and as her father unlocked the door, she turned and looked back at Don Felix, who waved before driving away.

“
Vieja!
” her father called out as he opened the door.

They went into a small, dark entry hall with a flight of stairs going up. To the right was a door. A light was on at the top of the stairs and Clara could hear someone moving—the sandpapery scrape of slippers on a dirty wood floor. Her mother! Clara was ecstatic. The shadow of her mother came slowly into view at the top of the stairs. “Roberto? It's late.” She sounded like she had been asleep, and as she came down the steps, one heavy tread at a time, Clara saw that she was wearing a floral nightdress. Her ankles were encased in wooly gray socks.