Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer Page 3

  “Lucio,” Rufina says. “Get out of our way.”

  Rufina remembers the last time Lucio delivered Rosalinda home, another offense of public indecency. A misunderstood woman who had suffered enough in her life, whose daughter he’d wanted to protect and couldn’t. Now look what he’d become, an adult with a badge and a car with sirens and lights, acting as Rosalinda’s chaperone. How patient he was as he led her from the front seat of his cruiser to the door. One of his arms around her waist, another holding her hand, as gracefully as if he were dancing her. He’d made her smile. She’d made him stop every time she had something to say. It had taken nearly fifteen minutes to travel the length of the yard. From the window above the kitchen sink, Rufina had full view of the father in Lucio. It detonated something inside her, causing a wreck her thoughts could not sort through.

  The wallet Rafa had slipped into his vest pocket bulges, but he conceals it with the inside of his forearm. On his wrist, the silver bracelet his mother had given him when he turned sixteen—not unlike a handcuff. As he drags the little red wagon, its floppy wheels chatter incessantly. He had pulled their sick mother around the garden in it, sang along to the records playing inside the house, tried to make her laugh with crude confessions he’d never imagine telling another. Lovers on psychedelics, all the begging, the scratches, the temporary courage, the wicked pleading and role-playing. The way in which he could figure-eight his hips. All the voices he could mimic. Never mind. Remembering makes it more difficult.

  Officer Armijo stops the wagon with his boot.

  “What do you want now?” Rafa asks. He drops the handle of the wagon, positions his arms across his torso in a way that keeps the wallet hidden.

  “If it’s just for the one day,” Officer Armijo says, “I’ll let it go.” His fingers trace badge, gun, collar. “It’s just for the one day, right?” He is in control. “I’m not going to see you here tomorrow with no permit, right?”

  Rufina pivots and throws her hip forward. She grabs the wagon’s handle and taps her brother’s thigh with her cane, as if he were a horse and had just been instructed to get moving. Her gait makes its own song.

  “Right?” Officer Armijo repeats, standing alone. The plaza has begun to drain of life. Vendors wrapping and packing, trunks of cars stuffed, tourists stroll out the side streets spoking in all four cardinal directions.

  Along the periphery, the Original Enduring Ones chatter with one another. Laughter sparks. They measure the sun against the times on their watches, discuss the consequence of being cast in the wrong role, how many generations has it been now? The chief, the medicine man, the drunk, the silent soldier who always dies. How many generations has it been now? They laugh some more. Who wants to be the leading man? The everyday guy? Deep in the rocks, their songs flicker.

  In the patrol car, Officer Lucio Armijo delays starting the engine. He shakes the keys in his palm as if they were dice, stares at the pattern of crow shit on his windshield, remembers the way Rufina’s chest bloomed with each breath, accentuated by the curve of her pose, the deep crease between her breasts. The tight curls of hair caught against her neck, the string of embroidery hanging loose at her shoulder. He knows that when he sits down to eat dinner with his wife and four sons, each time he swallows, he’ll see the shape of her lips, the tiny row of buttons down her front—a tender gauntlet—the button above her navel missing. And when he sleeps, he’ll dream of feeling all this against his fingertips.

  Five

  Before Rufina had spotted her brother under their mother’s bed, and forced him to bet his life, there had been a week of hide-and-seek in the house—Rufina locating stashes of Rosalinda’s pain pills, hiding them, finding more. Rafa trailing her in an attempt to track the collection he’d amassed. While Rafa had banished himself to the space beneath his mother’s bed, Rosalinda sat on the floor in the hallway, her back against the door. Rufina had to step over her. Each time she did, she’d strike her mother’s shins with her cane. The mother ignored her daughter as the mother had a habit of doing. This, of course, made Rufina strike her harder and more often.

  “Is this what you want for him?” Rufina asked. “To make him suffer more than you did when you were alive? Four months? Enough. Be dead already.” Notice what Rufina did not say: “I hate you for leaving me.”

  Every morning since her mother’s ghostly resurrection, when Rufina woke, she willed it to be the day her mother was still alive. Instead, there was the mournful mother pulling at the hooks of distress lodged deep in her mournful son. Dead, not dead.

  “It always has to be about you,” Rufina said. Notice she did not say to her mother, “I still need you.”

  “What do you know?” Rosalinda said, finally giving in to Rufina’s pestering. Her hair was chopped unevenly above her shoulders. That was Rufina’s fault. “You have no idea what this is about. Besides, you have your distractions—the earnest cop, Baby, and your other stupid fantasies.” Stupid fantasies being code for the Explorer—Rufina’s grieving for him after he’d left, her commitment to imagining his return. How many years had it been now—the age her child should be, nearly fifteen. She resisted the number, a sharp fact she would bend and remake into whatever she found most comforting—three weeks, six months.

  “You still haven’t—” Rufina stopped, she was aiming for an insult, but lost her fire. This was not uncommon for Rufina, to lose her words with her mother when she needed them as ammunition the most. What was it Rufina was going to say? “You still haven’t forgiven me”? Or was it “You still don’t love me like you love him”? Of course Rosalinda wasn’t concerned with Rufina. Or rather, it was her son she was concerned with and there wasn’t anything left for her daughter. Rufina wanted to protect Rafa, but couldn’t find the words that would ward the mother off. Trigger a phrase that would inflict hurt, cause the mother to recoil. Clearly, Rosalinda did not hesitate before attacking, and won every round.

  Rosalinda wore her signature dress, one of the Explorer’s designs, custom made for her petite figure. Vertical ruffles ran down her, severe and crisp as fins. The neckline plunged in the front as well as the back. Around her shoulders, a huipil, woven blue, purple, and green. Bracelets of assorted widths and metals stacked up and down both of her forearms, thick carved bands, stones larger than her knuckles piled onto her fingers, medallions for earrings hung down past her collarbones. Her neck was bare. There was the mole in the cup of her throat Rufina and Rafa would fight over. They each wanted to name it, to possess that tiny patch of skin. A bundle of pink and red sword lilies concealed her legs. Blush streaked each one of her cheeks. Her lips hid under an attack of fuchsia. The yellow-and-orange headdress of mums made her appear larger; however, even in death, she was out of place, a refugee.

  “What are you planning?” Rufina said. She would not cry in front of her mother. Instead, she bit the tip of her thumb. Grief was a powerful admission and she wasn’t having it. Notice she did not say, “Will I ever have you to myself?”

  “It doesn’t concern you,” the mother said. She reached up and put her hand on the doorknob.

  Rufina leaned against the wall, letting her grip on the cane relax. “It won’t work, will it?” she said. Rufina had been watching her mother, the way she moved around the house—when she lingered in a room, when she escaped into the next—and realized her mother could not come and go as she pleased. If a door had been left open, she could drift in or out, otherwise, she had to wait. Rufina found herself sweeping the mother from the thresholds of entryways with a broom meant for dead leaves and mice. She refused to open any doors. The more the mother wanted to comfort herself with Rafa, the more Rufina kept him away from her. They were nearly inseparable when she was alive—his fingers brushing and braiding her hair, the endless cups of tea made to her exact liking before she’d even asked for them, the way he listened intently to whatever language came out of her mouth, and when she seemed to wilt, his dramatic comedy-infused performance that would lift her. While he traveled, there
were the constant phone calls as if he were as close as the next room. Rufina wanted her turn. It was her turn.

  Rosalinda twisted her face as if she were going to spit at Rufina. This was not uncommon. While she never spat at her daughter, she would spit in front of her as if to spoil the space where Rufina were about to step. Instead, she grabbed her daughter’s cane, put it behind her back, rolled it under her hips so that she was sitting on it.

  “You can manage without,” the mother said. “Let me see you try.”

  Rufina considered how to move her mother in order to retrieve her cane. She imagined picking her mother up by her neck. Surely it couldn’t cause harm.

  “You act like you’re in pain,” the mother continued. “You don’t have any idea what pain is.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Rufina said. They were talking about the Explorer now. “It wasn’t my fault.” Which is to say the Explorer had devastated them both, but Rufina was only a girl and Rosalinda was the woman he called wife, as if it were a pet name. Know this: dual, simultaneous pregnancies out of which nothing survives carve a particular kind of scar. See the evidence of Rufina’s hip. See the way in which she holds on to Baby.

  “It’s been long enough,” the mother said. She wouldn’t look at Rufina when the Explorer’s memory threatened to resurface. It was a passive punishment, but relentless. Disappearing a daughter by not giving her any attention. She puckered her lips as if there were a cigarette between them, and, keeping her eyes fixed to her lap, said, “Please.” The sound of it was worthless, nearly inaudible. She offered a lily stem to Rufina. Held it above her head as if it were a flag of surrender.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Rufina said, biting her thumb even harder. Notice Rufina doesn’t say, “How was I supposed to know what to do?”

  Inside the mother’s bedroom, Rafa was a collection of scraps beneath the sheets. The palo santo, the copal, the musk of the mother’s unwashed scalp, the pungent bittersweet from under her arms still lingering after her death, all of this he used to comfort himself. Why didn’t Rufina understand? When the mother left, she took with her his place in the world, which means he had become a dislocated man.

  “I’m not letting you in,” Rufina said to the mother. “We can’t go on like this.” The stem of the sword lily was wet. There was no good way to hold it.

  The angel had been sitting cross-legged on the couch. She could not see what was happening in the hallway, and yet, she knew very well what was happening. She’d heard everything. The presence of the dead meant the presence of the angel. One followed the other in some unwritten code of grace. “No,” she commanded. Her voice carried down the hall. It caught in Rufina’s ears. Rufina let go of the flower. The mother swiveled around, placed her heels against the door, and beat on it with her feet. Started to wail. No longer gripping her daughter’s cane, Rufina retrieved it. Held it up by her right shoulder as if it were a baseball bat and thwacked her mother’s back—to no response, of course.

  Meanwhile, Rafa was naked under the sheets. He couldn’t remember how long he had been sprawled there. There were many things he couldn’t remember: airports, taxis, paychecks, drinks with colleagues, another man’s mouth. The mother’s candles continued to burn. Votives cluttered the surface of the nightstand, lined the mantle above the kiva fireplace, the windowsills. He lit her cigarettes, but did not smoke them. The butts stood in teacups filled with sand, along with the incense, burning from top to bottom. An entire carton of cigarettes was still under her bed. Occasionally, he’d hear Rufina put on a record. Something the Explorer had left, something the mother had not broken. Something with hand drums and tambourines, horns and incessant high notes.

  A memory played against the screen of his mind. Was he nine? Ten? His mother would send him down the hill to the liquor store for a pack of cigarettes, but this particular day when he was especially lonely for her, instead of buying her a pack as usual, he’d bought her a single cigarette. He’d ridden back with it unlit in his mouth and delivered it to her, along with a single match. He’d struck the match against a loose brick on the portál and cupped his hand around her lips. This had been how the Explorer had done it. Rafa had been watching the ways in which the Explorer had treated his mother closely. The way he’d pulled her to him, or pushed her away. His hands had been larger than her face and were often relocating her in space as if she were a figurine—from the floor to the counter, the stool to the couch, from the bed to the top of the dresser. Rafa rounded his fingers near the flame, his pinky resting on her upper lip. Her eyes did not leave his for the duration of this gesture. Then he sat on the cement before her, inhaling, while she sat in her little wooden Sunday school chair, exhaling. Twenty minutes later when she wanted another, down the hill he went, pedaling as fast as he could. She had to wait for him, of course. She was dependent on him, which is to say he knew this, and due to this fact, felt himself on his way to becoming a man.

  This continued for the entire day. One cigarette, one match, the gesture, the lingering. The need, the quest, the delivery. The Explorer observed from his post in the kitchen, but did not say a word. Rufina sat in the rocking chair on the roof waiting for her mother to join her, as Rosalinda occasionally did when she grew tired of painting on the floor. Instead, Rosalinda’s creative rhythm was disturbed with unnecessary waiting. The Explorer watched her face flatten, knew what was soon to come, but did not warn the boy. She had to take longer breaks from her ink portraits. Black on her thumbs, on the heels of her palms, the glistening wet portraits, the pleading conveyed in the eyes of her subjects, as if trapped. Even Rufina, from above, could hear her mother’s grunts of impatience as if she were a dog that’d gone too long without being fed. It was the summer, dry heat, and every day was endless. The dragonflies flew in swarms that year. Later that summer, the couple from Chile would arrive. For decades, season after season, Rafa and Rufina would still carry this summer with them and the impact the couple had made.

  When, on a return trip, the unlit cigarette fell from Rafa’s mouth and broke in half, he was curious what his mother would do. Should he go back for another and be more careful? Or would this give them more time together, offering her half a cigarette at a time? He decided it would in fact give them more time. He was convinced of this when he presented it to her. Instead of letting him put a match to what was left of it, his mother strode into the kitchen. When she returned, she had a paring knife. She used it to stab the front tire on his bicycle. “I’ve had enough of you,” she’d told him, and slammed the front door.

  He had to walk, but he came back with two packs, which he laid on her nightstand. In the time he’d been gone, she’d crawled into bed and had turned herself completely toward the wall. The incense smoke curled, the candlelight snapped. She whispered in that language none of them understood. The Explorer had thought it all hilarious and, when Rafa came in, sulking, he had laughed from the sink where he was peeling beets. Rufina continued rocking, alone, on the roof.

  The mother waited until the next morning to draw her son into her chest, bury him in her hair, kissing the dried sweat on his delicate neck, front and back. She had been thorough. Her fresh lipstick, orange and sticky, marked him like the tracks of a tiny, temperamental bird.

  Throughout his adulthood, each time he returned to the house and to the mother, it was as if he were stepping into a hole, the dark and familiar cavern of Rosalinda, who would submerge him, then consume him. Which is to say, this was how he came to understand love, this love that he longed for, then resisted when it came.

  He had been trained throughout his life to wait for his mother to summon him from Mumbai, Rome, Beirut, D.C., Geneva. Then: her hair around him, her laughing, his face covered with her lips, the tracks of that rare bird on him, the son. The only son.

  She was wailing in the hallway. Is that what he heard? The sound of her feet thundering against the door outpaced his heart.

  Mi hijo. Mi amor. Mi conejito.

  Rafa stared at the miniature can
dle flames twitching inside the votive glasses. He thought of her most often-told story, her legendary escape, the long migration, the fantastical journey of it. She told him how she could feel him growing inside her like a vine as she crawled along cactus-studded paths at night, stones splitting her knees. Every time she told it, the details changed—what were the borderlands, how many family members were killed, four or fifteen; how long it took, three weeks or six months; who was chasing her, rebels or military; if there was help or not along the way; whether it was women or men or children that offered her food, or was it the guanaco, chinchilla, or capybara that told her which way to go. And then there were the details that remained the same—she had no choice but to run from her village: there was gunfire and smoke; the volcano was at her back; she had become pregnant and thought the spirits of the dead were hiding inside her, growing in mass.

  Even the consistent details of the story seemed as though they were near-truths. All of it overwhelming—memories, lies. Rafa had once attempted to track her route. The impossibility of it. He remembered the mountains, the rivers, deserts, the variety of climates and ecotones, all that space in between. The silence in place of answered questions, no matter how he had phrased the questions. There was the weight of never knowing something so simple as where his mother, his people were from. When his mother had been alive, the mystery could be camouflaged by more fantastical stories. She always had another, more convincing tale at the ready, but now, what was there?