Читать книгу Juventud - Vanessa Blakeslee - Страница 8

CHAPTER ONE

For years I kept my only photo of us propped against my bedroom mirror, until I lost it—the fading print unframed, each crease memorized. The shot is a poor one: we’re outside at night, during a street festival, the lighting dim. I’m leaning back underneath a crumbling Spanish archway, one foot up against the wall. My long, thick hair drapes over my shoulders, mouth open as if the photographer caught me by surprise. But Manuel gazes confidently into the camera, chin lifted, eyes wide. First love—was that what drew us together, and nothing more? How have I spent the last fifteen years punishing the wrong man?

On the cusp of the millennium, 1999, we appear smooth-faced and young. Manuel was twenty-one then, and I was fifteen. My American friends are always shocked at the early age Colombians start dating. At thirteen, girls start going to clubs, having sex if they have a serious boyfriend—their novios five years older, maybe more. In a country so overwhelmingly Catholic, parents give permission because many couples marry after high school.

Or at least that was the way things happened then.

This is how I remember my last five months in Santiago de Cali. Along with most of the upper-class, I moved through my daily routine largely unaffected by the troubles: one in five residents out of work and unemployment rising, the streets jammed with listless young men, the guerillas and the government still at war after four decades, one- to two- million Colombians displaced from their villages by the bloodbaths. That January, peace talks had been suspended between the FARC, the dominant rebel army, and our president, Andrés Pastrana Arango. In February, government officials met with Garcia, high-ranking leader of the other revolutionary force, the ELN—lesser in number than the FARC but no less determined to one day topple the government, to win back Colombia from the ruling elite, and install a Marxist Socialist regime. The government was purportedly extending the olive branch to the rebels, claiming to give them a legitimate political stake and control of land—for the revolutionaries and rural poor to unite in driving off the narco-traffickers. The radio programs mentioned little about the paramilitaries, however, and I wouldn’t find out until months later how also in January, these unofficial branches of Colombia’s armed forces had carried out a series of civilian massacres—the main reason for the violent backlash both guerilla armies would unleash in the months ahead. All I knew then was that the year had barely begun, and all sides had failed to agree on dates and a location for a political convention to push the peace process forward.

Otherwise, the disparity outside my windows didn’t faze me much. I was still mourning the loss of my first crush, whom I’d met at a Valentine’s dance and whose parents had swiftly enrolled him at a military school in the United States a few weeks later, after the FARC captured and assassinated three indigenous-rights activists, all American. That was my luck, I thought, almost sixteen and still no boyfriend. Like any teenage girl, I yearned to fall in love. Beyond that, I had few desires. I had never traveled outside of Latin America; my father, whom I called Papi, owned a satellite TV but we watched few channels. I never imagined living anywhere but Colombia, if not Cali, where the mist hovered along the dense jungle of the mountainsides like the smoke from my father’s cigars, and the salsa pulsated from the clubs at night.

The day I first saw Manuel, I had just completed my first dreadful term at Hebrew school. We took classes in Hebrew language and religion in addition to English, and those subjects bored me. But my father insisted I enroll since the school had the most rigorous education available, more so than the Catholic Schools or the British School. My mother had been Jewish so the school accepted me in January, even though my grades were average. Two months had passed since then, and Colombia was celebrating Semana Santa. That year, Holy Week coincided with Passover. My school celebrated the end of the term with a Seder meal at midday for students and families, and my father demanded that I participate even though he refused to attend. He listed his usual reasons for staying on the hacienda: the work of a farmer did not stop during holidays and so on. He forever avoided discussing the true reason: he distrusted organized religion. But in his eyes I needed to make a better effort to know my teachers and the other students—more of an effort, perhaps, because I was not a practicing Jewish girl but enrolled solely for academics. The description of the Seder also bored me, and the prospect of dressing in my drab uniform even though classes were on holiday put me in a sour mood. As soon as I was done with the reading, hand-washing, and nibbling of bitter foods on my plate, I fled.

I headed off alone, since I still hadn’t befriended any students. This was, in part, a silent rebellion against my father for removing me from my previous high school in la Ciudad Jardín, where Ana and Gracia, the closest girls I could count as friends, attended. The Hebrew school was located off the Plaza de Cayzedo downtown, in the historic district. I had told our driver I would meet him on the main street across the square. I walked slowly, enjoying the dry April afternoon. A crowd spilled out of the great Catedral de San Pedro, and the bells tolled three o’clock. Incense permeated the air, a scent faintly like burnt sugarcane mixed with the gritty Cali fumes of car exhaust. I stopped, curious. Old women and men, children, teenagers, bowed their heads and made the sign of the cross. An eerie stillness crept over the square. I made a sign of the cross, too, just because it seemed right, then remembered and felt strange for doing so in my Hebrew uniform. I didn’t believe in religion, but nevertheless Catholicism surrounded me; only in that respect had I ever felt like an outsider in my homeland.

From a side street, a procession appeared of a half-dozen young men, bare-chested, hoisting a chipped, plaster Jesus statue shoulder high. I pressed among the bystanders for a better view. Three more young men followed, carrying a rugged cross made of twisted tree limbs. A throng of pilgrims surrounded the last trio, whose grave faces captivated me, especially the one with the lightly tanned face, delicate features, and head of thick dark hair. He caught my hand as he passed by, and I gasped; just as quickly, he released me. Only after he was a dozen strides ahead, his back to the throng, did I step away, leaving me to wonder if I had imagined the encounter. I knew I hadn’t, but someone rubbed my elbow—an old man grinned up at me, eyes yellow and teeth missing, and said, “Knows what he likes when he sees it. Me too,” and slid his hand along my waist. I wrestled out of his grasp and hurried off. “No shame in it,” the old man said, trailing after me, and spat on the cobblestones. “Think you’re too good! Juventud.”

Youth, he muttered. But at that moment, I felt suddenly older. Halfway across the square, I spun around. The young man and tail end of the cross slipped inside the tall cathedral doors. Cali teemed with two million people. I wasn’t likely to see him again.

In the driver’s seat, Fidel snoozed with his El País and lotto tickets strewn across his lap, the handle of his 9mm just visible beneath the newspaper. I rapped on the bulletproof glass to wake him, and minutes later, we were passing the open buses on the autopista toward home. Fidel, whom I guessed to be in his early thirties, had only been with us a few months. Atop the dash he had affixed a plastic Virgin Mary statue that bobbed as we struck potholes, and below, a sticker of a sexy girl in a bikini—a contradiction I caught myself smirking at more than once. We hadn’t spoken much beyond small talk about the weather and Cali’s often-gridlocked traffic. Unlike Medellín and Bogotá, Cali’s infrastructure was terrible: detours, gravel roads, and broken pavement proliferated, even in the city’s center. Sometimes the commute to and from my school took over an hour.

Today the holiday had cleared the highway of traffic. We wound our way through outlying towns. The latest reggaeton hit belted from the radio, and Fidel drummed the wheel.

“Have you ever been in love?” I asked.

He glanced at me in the rearview mirror, grinning. “Why? You have a boyfriend now, princess?” Princesa was the nickname of Papi’s workers for me.

I shook my head and stared out the window. “I just wondered if you believed in love.”

“Why are you asking me? Your father is the one to ask.”

We’d stopped at a light. A few teenage boys and older men with creased faces held up bunches of peppers for sale, sleeves of cheap sunglasses and watches. Papi didn’t have a serious novia; he never did. Occasionally he had parties at the farm and invited our neighbors, hacienda owners, and sometimes a woman would stay the night in his room. But in the morning her high heels clicked faintly out the door, followed by an engine’s rumble. Such women remained elusive, absent from our daily life.

Seas of sugarcane rushed past on either side, the valley speckled with the bamboo lean-tos and rubbish heaps of the poor. A pregnant woman draped laundry over tree branches, a toddler balanced on one hip.

Or did Fidel mean something about Papi and my mother? She had left when I was less than two, and where she was now Papi said he could only guess. The phone had never rung with her voice on the other end, and no letter had ever arrived for me in her handwriting. The simple life was too empty for her, Papi would say, stirring his tinto for a beat too long. She needed ideas, unusual personalities, and expeditions. I knew little else about her.

We sped around a bend. Fidel slammed on the brakes and we lurched, tires shrieking. A half-dozen Jeeps and canvas-topped trucks surrounded a city bus. We skidded to a stop just short of a Jeep’s rear. A camouflaged figure leaped out, pointed and shouted at us; pock-marked and thick-browed, he was no more than a teenager. Fidel flicked off the music and snatched the 9mm onto his lap. The dozen bandidos on foot pointed automatic rifles at the bus. Passengers spilled out and lined up with their hands behind their heads, the small children wailing. An old woman stumbled from the bus into the gravel, her dress askew, lumpy thighs and swollen veins exposed. A bandido yanked her to standing.

“Get down,” Fidel hissed. He palmed the steering wheel and shifted gears; our car jerked to the left. Then he punched the gas. We surged forward and swung around the hijacked bus, into the blind curve of the other lane. I crouched forward into the back of his seat like the crash position on airplane emergency cards, silently choking down the stench of burnt rubber. Oh, God, I thought, hoping for what or whom to save us? So this was how life could just end, one instant chatting about boyfriends over the beats of reggaetón, and then the next, smashed or shot? I recalled T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men:” This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.

“Pigs. Robbing on Semana Santa. You can get up now, Mercedes.”

But I stayed hunched, rubbing my sweaty palms in my skirt folds. We heard about hijackings and robberies but I had only witnessed one, a long time ago: a checkpoint where Papi had paid off the armed men with American dollars. Colombians who had the means avoided rural routes and traveled cross-country by domestic airlines. If Fidel had not acted so quickly, would I have been dragged from the car, forced into a Jeep—and then what? At last the tires crunched gravel. We had turned onto the road that led up to the gate of our hacienda.

On either side, Papi’s sugarcane crop arose like two pale green walls bordering the road home. Rubber-booted workers fanned across the fields and hopped in and out of pickups. Fidel beeped at Luis, Papi’s main jefe, as we zipped past, who touched his hat brim from astride his Paso Fino. March and April brought an end to the dry season; the workers were draining the soil to prepare for the next crop. Our hacienda was situated in the Valle de Cauca at the foothills of the Andes, where on the steep hillsides we grew coffee, and on the warm valley slopes, raised alpacas and horses. Thousands of acres of cane not being enough for Papi, he became irritable when idle. He and his half dozen jefes, men whom I had known ever since I could remember, ran the farm and oversaw the workers who labored in our fields or rented small plots of land from us.

Our jefes lived in a guesthouse near the stable, all middle-aged but unmarried—uncles and protectors, even if they weren’t our blood. I imagined myself riding next to them one day, running the farm with Papi. Most had lost their families to either the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, better known as the FARC, or the Ejército de Liberación Nacional, the ELN—if not the guerillas, then the bloodiness of the drug cartels. In the evenings they gathered outside to smoke cigars and drink rum or beer, and their laughter drifted to my bedroom window. Our land, aglow in the sunset, stretched empty and vast.

The car approached the driveway, Fidel waved to the guard, who then pressed the button that opened the gate at a sloth’s speed, and a minute later, the gate closed, the roadside robbery shut out. I climbed the slope, past the paddock and up the stone steps, inhaling the scents of fresh tamales and horses. The breeze carried the manure stench up the hill, despite the wide lawn that separated the house from the stable, which stood just inside the gate. Right behind the house, the mountainside arose abruptly, bare stretches of trails visible here and there in the dense tropical brush. Opposite, the foothills tumbled to flatness, the cane carpeting the valley for miles.

Papi sat in his chair, a stack of glossy brochures and forms next to his ashtray. He’d tucked his cotton pants into his high rubber boots, an ankle resting on the opposite knee, his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his brown chest. Gitano music rollicked from the stereo. With one hand he clutched the purple bandanna he usually tied around his head, and he pinched a cigar between his fingers with the other. Shaka and Zulu, our young Rhodesian ridgebacks, squeezed next to his chair to be petted, and our adopted strays, Cocoa and the three-legged Angel, clamored for attention between the giant haunches of the purebreds. I threw down my school bag; Papi sprang to his feet. But I didn’t move; my legs had become like fence posts.

“What happened?” Papi asked, advancing. “Was the Seder so terrible?”

Fidel stepped inside, hung the keys on the hook. “We passed a bus hijacking.”

“Who was it? Guerillas?” Papi pulled me close and rubbed my back.

Fidel shrugged. As Papi hugged me, I eyed the materials by his chair. School brochures in English. Papi told me to change into some comfortable clothes and then we could talk. “Take your time,” he said. “I want to discuss some things with Fidel, and you’re upset. I’ll tell Inez to fix you a snack.” He waved me upstairs and addressed Fidel. It would do no good to protest.

We lived in a split-level ranch house, Spanish-style, with the bedrooms upstairs. Downstairs we had an open kitchen—Papi disliked the closed kitchens common in Latin American households with servants and preferred the American style, with barstools at an open counter and the living room adjoined. Tile floors extended throughout both levels of the house, adorned here and there with Moroccan carpets. Inez and the maids slept in small bedrooms on the other end of the kitchen, near the laundry. My room had a window seat overlooking the front courtyard and the valley, and Papi’s had a small balcony that did the same. When he was back from the fields, he spent most of his time downstairs with the glass doors of the living room thrown open. Although our leather couches displayed few pillows and the maids scrubbed the floors until they gleamed, our house always felt warm, like home.

The only exception to this was the lack of photographs. Whenever I visited the homes of schoolmates, pictures abounded—snapshots of celebrations, beach trips to Cartagena, black-and-whites of grandparents from years past. But Papi kept none on display, except for the portrait of my mother beside his bed.

As I changed out of the brown-and-yellow Hebrew school uniform and into jeans and a cotton blouse, he and Fidel lobbed heated words back and forth—not an argument between them, I could tell, but about something or someone. Probably the latest guerilla uprising.

I passed Papi’s bedroom, the door ajar, and paused, then crept inside and lifted the frame with my mother’s face. She had such pale skin; I had gotten my sprinkling of freckles from her. Some might not consider her pretty, but I did. Paula—was she still alive, and would I ever meet her? Around holidays and my birthday, I had bugged Papi about how we might find out where she was. “Once you’re eighteen, you can go look for her all you want,” he said. “But she’s fragile, I doubt she could handle the guilt. Probably best to forget it.”

From below, the conversation lulled. Wistfully, I returned the frame to the nightstand and headed downstairs. Fidel left, shutting the front door behind him, but not without giving me a little wave.

Papi patted the seat next to him. I slumped into a cushioned armchair; the ridgebacks stirred. They squeezed out the gap in the sliding-glass door and bolted down the lawn. The mutts, Cocoa and Angel, planted themselves at Papi’s feet. The laziest of our plantation dogs, they were his round-bellied favorites. Angel licked the side of his boot like a devoted mistress.

“What is this about?” I asked, gesturing toward the brochures.

He nodded over my shoulder to the valley. “What happened today with the bus,” he said, and drew on his cigar. “Things are only going to get worse. I want you to finish high school in the United States. Then go to university. Not stay here and get kidnapped.”

I said nothing. Leaving—no. Wasn’t danger just a part of life? Six years before, Pablo Escobar had been killed in Medellín and the Cali Cartel, headed by the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers, rose to dominate and supply most of the world’s cocaine. Some fathers dealt cocaine; my father earned his living from commodities, and shipping. Those who could afford to lived behind gates and hired drivers.

“Fidel has a gun,” I said. “You and the jefes have them, too. We have the biggest gate. All those guards at school—who’s going to kidnap me?”

“Girls your age shouldn’t be worrying about who is protecting them with a gun. You have other things to think about.”

Inez entered with a tray of tea and English biscuits, my usual after-school snack. Papi poured a cup, sifted through the brochures, and talked about the American boarding schools. To be accepted I would need to speak and write English at a far greater level than I did. How could he even think of shipping me off? I nibbled at a biscuit, but it turned to sawdust in my mouth, and I tossed it aside. I rubbed my temples. “I want to be a flight attendant,” I whispered, staring at my lap. “Like Tía Leo.”

Papi gathered the brochures and sat down on the hassock before me. “The education abroad is much better,” he said. “You could start next year. January, maybe even sooner. Then attend one of the American universities.”

“I can go to the university here.” I poured a cup of tea, frowning.

“You’re missing the point. I don’t want you to get stuck in Colombia for the rest of your life. It’s not safe.” He glanced around as if someone even now might be listening. In the outdoor courtyard our two parrots in the big cage squawked as a maintenance worker fixed our fountain that had been broken since Christmas. Papi said, “You can blame me, okay?”

“Blame you? I don’t want to leave you. Or anything.” I reached down and fed Cocoa the remainder of my biscuit.

“I should have sent you a few years ago. In a way, it would have been easier for both of us.” He drank his tea and smoked in between sips, the haze hanging around his head. “All I’m asking is that you trust me on this. I’m prepared to do whatever it takes, mi preciosa. I’m glad to take care of the costs.”

“Couldn’t something just as easily happen to me there? And look, you wouldn’t even be around,” I said. “Don’t they have crazies committing murders all the time in the United States?”

“There are no guarantees, it’s true. But as a rule their problems with violence are not like here, like what happened today.”

“How can you be so sure? I could live here for years and be fine.”

“Mercedes, do you really want to find out what happens when you aren’t lucky enough to get away?”

Gitano music ripped through the silence between us, the voices bellowing and hands clapping to the staccato beat. “No,” I said.

“Believe me, this isn’t an easy decision for me, either.” He got up slowly, as if his slight paunch were already too much for his forty-six-year-old knees. “Boarding school; I didn’t even know that existed at your age. I hope I’m not turning you into a spoiled brat.”

I lifted a brochure. Sacred Heart, it read, and the one beneath read Country Day. Teens in crisp polo shirts beamed in front of brick dorms. “I’ll pick a cheap one,” I said, dropping them back onto the pile. “Even though I hate the idea.”

Papi went for a cookie then, and I slapped his hand. “No, you’re getting too fat,” I told him. He pointed to his belly and made a quizzical, innocent face. I chucked a cookie at him; it bounced off his chest, and Cocoa snatched it greedily.

Fidel drove me to Ana’s the following night for her Easter party. As we approached the Cali exits, I thought again of the bold young man outside the cathedral. Who was he? If I went there again, might I have a chance at running into him? The brightly-lit mansion towered three stories, the homes on either side dark and silent—their gates locked and inhabitants likely on holiday to beach towns, Cartagena or Santa Marta. Cars lined Ana’s driveway, the guard perched in his booth in front of her father’s Land Rover and her mother’s Volvo, munching chips and jabbering on his cell phone. To my surprise, Ana opened the door instead of the maid. “Chica, you look beautiful!” she gushed, holding her wine glass aside as she leaned forward to peck my cheek. A moment later, I choked on perfume as her mother, aunts, and housekeeper hugged me so hard, I slipped a little on the marble floor. Before dinner, they had all attended the biggest mass of the year, Holy Saturday. Their cheerful faces reflected back from photos as Ana and I climbed the steps, the stairway so crammed with frames, not an inch had been spared—more than a few of Ana in a sash and crown from the many beauty pageants she had competed in.

Upstairs and before a wide-screen TV, sound system, and giant painting of the Virgin Mary, Gracia, Ana’s cousin, rehearsed flamenco. Both had the straight, dark hair of many colombianas and which I envied, but Gracia was taller than Ana, and lithe; her strong limbs gracefully sliced the air. At six she’d discovered her passion for folkloric dance and flamenco, and the year before the Mirador, an exclusive restaurant, had hired her—the youngest dancer ever to perform there, and where she now danced several nights a week. Unlike Ana, who loved to lie on the beach, spend afternoons at the mall and salon; Papi thought her lazy and indulged.

Yet Ana, despite her penchant for luxury, ducked into church after school to light candles and pray, and spent weekends volunteering at clothing drives for orphans. Once, after I had waited on the sidewalk for her to finish her devotions, I asked her what she prayed about. “I pray for my problems, but mostly I pray for the world,” she said. “For everyone in Colombia to find love and peace.” Everyone? I asked, even the drug traffickers, the paras and guerillas? She just stared at me and said, “God lives in everyone, even the worst.” I had marveled at her remark, and how those we thought we knew, whom we shared gossip with over ice cream and churros, we hardly knew the depths of.

I shared my encounter the day before in the square, how nothing had happened, a mere moment—yet it had been something. Did they think I had a chance of meeting him again?

“Why didn’t you go after him, Mercedes?” Gracia asked. She threw a pillow at me. “You’re crazy to have passed up the chance. Now he’s gone.”

Someone set off a firecracker in the yard. The cathedral ceiling echoed with the laughter and outbursts of Ana’s siblings greeting their friends.

“Once you have a boyfriend, your father will forget all about this boarding school idea,” Ana said. “Trust me, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself on that farm without his princess around, and his grandchildren one day. Your own estate, just down the road. I can’t wait for all of that to happen to me,” she added.

We headed downstairs.

Beneath the fireplace, Ana’s boyfriend, Carlos, stocky and round-faced, sat in one of the intricately carved rocking chairs plucking a guitar. A few minutes later, Ana flicked the lights. Gracia entered in a blood-red flamenco dress, her novio Esteban in black pants and a tight-fitting T-shirt. Several inches taller than Gracia, he stood erect and confident; he drew attention from not just women, but men, too.

“Come in,” Ana called to those lingering, and that’s when I saw him: the joven from the cathedral was making his way across the room. Only instead of shouldering a cross, he carried a guitar case and was grinning. He claimed his place beside Carlos, a few seats from me; his forearms and neck glistened. Party-goers crowded inside, abandoned their drinks on windowsills; in the rush, a chubby girl knocked one over and yelped, the drink staining her jeans. The guitarists’ voices and the fast rhythm of their guitars in unison broke across the chatter; the dancers’ swift movements and clicking heels blurred. The cross-bearer’s eyes shut tight as he sang, his voice, rich and clear, swelled with an ardent longing that eclipsed the words—would he remember me? Gracia stamped to the flamenco beat, her face as stiff and solemn as a saint, eyes blazing, chest heaving. The maid came by with a tray of Perrier and I snatched one, drank it gratefully.

Afterward, the room buzzed. I stood and my legs shook. Guests mobbed the performers; a pair of older girls cornered the guitarists, laughing and flipping their hair as they thanked them. I grabbed Ana’s arm, my lips to her ear, and told her I needed to talk to her right now. She ushered me into the kitchen. The door swung shut behind us.

There the mood was oddly quiet, even somber. The two maids were washing cocktail glasses and listening to someone on the radio preach about Christ and the resurrection. I told Ana the guitarist was the young man from the cathedral. “Isn’t that weird, that he’s here? So he and Carlos must know each other well, right?”

“But don’t you know who that is?” Ana played with her necklace; a gift from her parents, its emerald studs glittered. Her status as a city dweller seemed to give her an edge over me, and I was forever trying to catch up to the knowledgeable sophistication her social skills bestowed upon her. His name was Manuel, and he was the older brother of Carlos by two years, she told me. “He’s really involved with the Catholic youth group my brother and I go to sometimes—very popular. Girls chase after him like crazy. He’ll talk your ear off about social justice if you let him.”

“Will you introduce us?”

She rolled her eyes at me as if to say, of course. “Manuel, he’s a good one. Passionate, too. If you can handle that.” She pushed open the door to the dining room, eager to rejoin her guests.

What had she meant by that? It almost sounded like a warning, or a challenge. But a moment later, I was standing outside in the shadowed yard, the streetlights shining across Manuel’s face, his eyes once again locked on mine.

Right after Ana introduced us, she slipped off to flirt and left Manuel and me alone. The mountains made dark silhouettes by the city lights and the moon. Some friends casually kicked a fútbol among them. Their cigarette smoke cut through the heady sweetness of the tree blossoms and their banter boomed and fell.

“I saw you yesterday,” I said. “In the square.”

He studied me, shifted his stance. “Jeans are a much better look for you, Mercedes Martinez.” A car revved on the main street, bass beats vibrating, then shrieked off. I had never kissed anyone before, and while we stood there, unmoving, it was all I could think about. I didn’t want to move unless it was to touch him, to kiss that small mouth of his, place my hands on the back of his neck and draw him toward me.

“Strange I haven’t met you before, since it seems like we know the same people,” he said finally. “And then to see one another, two days in a row. During Holy Week, no less.” I felt him taking in my white skin and smattering of freckles. Might he easily dismiss me for lacking the right attributes? Ana was sitting next to Carlos on the steps, playing with the hair above his ear. I envied her and Gracia, and the other girls I knew, their curvy hips and creamy skin without a blemish. My features stuck out next to theirs. I had a nose that I considered stubby, and thick, curly brown hair that I needed a flat iron to straighten.

One of Ana’s brothers lifted a girl in horseplay; as he set her down, both gave us a sidelong glance. I asked Manuel if he’d like to go for a walk. We nodded at the guard and headed down the street.

“Are you a dancer? One of Gracia’s friends?” he asked.

“Flamenco, no—I wish. I’ve known Gracia since grade school.”

“Can you sing?”

“Sing?” I echoed. “No, I sing like a dying parakeet sounds.”

He laughed a little, lightly touched my back. “I’m sure you’re not as bad as that. So how do you know Ana then? From church? I’ve never seen you there.”

“I’ve never been to church. Ana’s parents know my father.”

“Never?” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I see.”

Manuel was twenty-one. He had just finished two years at a trade school and was now building cabinets for his father’s furniture business. I asked about his family. “My parents are good middle-class people,” he replied, “and very religious.” An older brother, Emilio, planned on entering the seminary in September to become a priest. Carlos, the youngest brother, had just started attending university to study engineering. Manuel lived with them on the outskirts of la Ciudad Jardín in a neighborhood I’d never been to, but had heard was decent. Then he asked where I lived, and about my parents. When I mentioned Papi and our hacienda, his expression changed. He pretended to study me, finger to chin, eyes squinting comically—like the ways Papi teased.

“Hmm,” he said. “You don’t appear dangerous. I guess you might be worth the risk.”

“What are you talking about?” I trailed my hand along the low-lying branches of a tree we passed, the petals like newborn skin.

“Your father is Diego Martinez, right?” His expression was one of disbelief. “There are stories about your father that aren’t too nice.”

We walked briskly. “What stories?” I flicked a blossom I’d picked at the V of his shirt, and he caught it. “My father runs a big farm. Is he not a good businessman?”

“You haven’t heard stories about his days in the cartel?”

I slowed my pace. I said, “People like to invent stories, I guess. Because the truth is boring.”

“But it’s somewhat foolish to imagine that it’s all purely false, don’t you think? If the people saying such things were actually there?”

“Foolish?”

“Easy, simple. And yes, foolish.”

“That’s crazy, okay?” I stopped and faced him. “My father is completely obsessed with my school progress. He’s generous to his workers, our house staff, everyone.” What was he talking about and why was he asking so many questions about my father, and not me? Was this what Ana had meant? We’d reached the small square and Ana’s church. A wreath of white lilies adorned the entrance, and a gust of wind blew a lone sheet of newspaper against it. I blinked back tears.

Manuel touched my shoulder. “I’m sorry. That was silly of me, to bring that up. Of course people talk. I’d much rather hear about what it’s like for you, growing up on such a big farm.” His thumb traced my collarbone; I shivered. “What you’re doing in downtown Cali, hanging around holy processions.”

“I don’t usually,” I said, and laughed. “I guess I had better watch out.”

“You should,” he said. Then he pulled me toward him and kissed me. I clung to him hard; his hands ran down my body. His mouth tasted faintly of lime and soda water, his stubble grazing my face. I opened my eyes, caught my breath. Candles burned at window shrines. Somewhere in the valley gunshots rang out.

“I’m sorry, I just had to do that,” he said. We both laughed. Then he said, “You know, you’re very well-spoken for being fifteen.”

“Oh, really?” This time I drew him toward me, the hair at the nape of his neck as fine and slippery as corn silk.

“I had better get your number before I leave,” he said. “We might be testing our luck if we count on running into each other again.”

He removed a little notebook and pen from the back of his jeans pocket. Rather peculiar. When I asked him why he carried those, he replied that he wrote his own lyrics, including some of the songs he had performed with Carlos.

At Ana’s he helped Carlos load the guitars into a Honda. Manuel led me to his motorcycle, handed me a CD before he mounted the bike. “Something to keep you company until we see each other again,” he said. I told him where my school was, suggested we meet up the next afternoon. Underneath his helmet the corners of his eyes lifted up. The air swept my face, the moto’s roar crackled in my ears, and a moment later he rounded the block, out of sight.

The festivities over, I joined Ana’s family for a late meal of lechona. Ana’s father stood over the roast pig, his carving hurried and erratic; he apologized, laughing, as vegetables and rice spilled out of the belly and onto the tablecloth. Foisting a slice of pork onto my plate, he asked if I had any plans yet for my future. I talked about working for Taca like my Tía Leo and avoided mention of the boarding school idea, which Ana’s parents would no doubt praise. My response drew a few chuckles and raised eyebrows, and her father said only, “Well, that would be a nice way to see the world, wouldn’t it?” Then the conversation shifted to their emerald mines in the Andes; Taca Airlines evidently did not rank highly on their list of occupational goals.

Fidel and I drove home in silence, the radio off. Under the stars, the remaining sugarcane left to be harvested swirled with the breeze. I rolled down the window, stuck out my arm, and spread my fingers. In the city or on the autopista, we could never lower our windows and locked the car as soon as we shut the doors; Gracia’s mother had been carjacked outside the Cali courthouse several years before. We rounded the curve where the bandidos had held up the bus. Now that side of the road was bare, with no trace of what had happened but my memory of it.

I raised the window, took out the case holding the plain disc Manuel had given me, and rested it on my knee. “Sucursal del cielo” he’d titled it in black marker—in English, “Branch of Heaven.”

On the porch Papi played cards with the men, their weekend tradition for as long as I could remember. Cash piled up in the table’s center: mostly American dollars, peso notes in higher amounts, plus some coins strewn on top. Sometimes visitors were invited to join, or Fidel, but not often—he probably didn’t earn enough. I guessed they had eaten a typical Colombian meal for their Easter dinner, sancocho or another soup of potatoes and rib meat, nothing fancy. The cigar smoke stung my eyes, but I leaned down and kissed Papi on the cheek anyway. He asked if I’d had a good time. Guillermo’s cards buckled in his thick fingers as he broodily studied them. Vincente muttered something to the horse trainer, who was absently stroking his day-old stubble; the two erupted in laughter. At the far end, Luis slapped the table’s edge and swore. He was the ignorant, sloppily-dressed main jefe of the cane fields, and almost never quiet.

“Is it okay if I have a friend over for dinner this week?” I asked Papi.

“Sure. Who’s the friend?” He fanned the cards onto the table. Luis groaned.

“Oh, someone I just met at Ana’s. From her church.”

“Talk with Inez, decide which night. Hey, did you take a look at those brochures?”

“Not yet, but I will. I promise.”

Luis and two others laid out their cards with drawn faces. Papi reached up, tugged the end of my ponytail, and wished me a good-night. As I turned to leave, he swept the pile of money toward him.

Scalp tingling, I slid the glass door shut on their noise. I wished Inez a happy Easter and asked if she’d seen her family. She stood on a stepstool to scrub at the sink; by age twelve, I’d surpassed her by a few inches, her short height not unusual for those descended from indigenous blood. Papi had hired her before my mother’s arrival. When I was younger and she got angry with me for letting the dogs run in just after she had polished the floors, she used to remind me that I would not have survived without her. I never heard Papi say a sharp word to Inez as he sometimes did to the maids when they didn’t do something right; he had raised me to mind her as much as him.

I sat at the counter facing her and said, “So, I think I’m going to have a friend over for dinner soon, and I want you to make something really good. Maybe get some fresh fish from the market? Or maybe a pasta dish, something Italian?”

Her mouth curled up as she whisked a towel over a platter. “Something special? Who’s the boy?”

“I didn’t say it was a boy! Look, I haven’t told Papi, just said it was a friend. Which is true. So please don’t say anything.” I grabbed the tail end of the towel.

“Okay, no problem. But do you really want to start a romance when you’re going to be leaving?” She eyed me, resuming her place on the stepstool, blew a strand of hair off her lips. “I’d be happy to stick to parties with my friends if I were you. How was Easter dinner at Ana’s? Did they serve lamb or the roast pork?”

“Pork.” I swiveled idly on my stool. Luis stood giving out another round of beers, but Papi waved him off. My father’s expression had dimmed somewhat. Bottles clinked, followed by muffled laughter. I said, “I wish we had a big family to celebrate holidays with, sometimes. Do you remember holidays when Papi’s parents and brothers were still alive?”

Inez shook her head. “That was before my time,” she said, staring down at her dishes.

“They farmed coffee, didn’t they? Before the market collapsed?”

“Coffee, yes. They were good Catholics, his parents. Hardworking, honest. Everyone said so. How they each must have suffered in the end—it wasn’t right. Only God knows.”

“You mean they had cancer or something? Was he not there with them, when they died?”

“Cancer, no—they were both strong as mules, your grandparents. They could have lived to be a hundred.” Steam billowed from the sprayer; her face a grave mask, flushed pink along her high cheekbones. She set down the sprayer and squared her stance toward me. “You know, your father and aunt have kept this from you long enough. I’ll tell you, but you mustn’t let them know how you found out, okay?” I clutched the countertop and nodded, waiting for her to begin.

“Your grandparents,” she said, chin lifted, “they were gunned down by guerillas.”

A web of cracks split across the mosaic tiles that she rested the platter against, and the counter chilled my arms. “Why didn’t Papi ever tell me?” I asked.

“Too painful, perhaps. And you knowing may lead to other questions.”

“About my mother?”

She squeezed her sponge, hesitated before she spoke. “Your mother, yes. This farm did not have all the comforts it has now. When she arrived, you know—the house was just a few bare rooms. I didn’t think she would stay, even with my help.”

“Because she was rich? From Miami?”

Loose hairs clung to her damp cheeks as Inez shook her head. She raised her suds-covered hands. “You think your mother could kill a chicken?” she asked, and mimed snapping one’s neck in the air. “No, not if her life depended on it, and all we had running around here was chickens and goats. So she left. Your Papi let her go. He had to. She had a nervous breakdown.”

I ran a towel over a pot. A breakdown, how did that happen? How did you kill a chicken? I was half-American; did this mean I wasn’t worthy of Colombia, wasn’t tough enough? That I might, too, end up broken one day? “But if he loved her,” I said, “why why couldn’t he have lived with her in America? Don’t they have ranches there?”

Her face remained as smooth as a plate; she peeked over my shoulder at the men. “If I know one thing in my life, it’s that your father is a good man. But I also know a few other things.” She dragged another pot into the sink, dipped her sponge in soap and scrubbed. After a few moments, she paused and brushed a moist rope of hair behind her ear. “Your father cannot go to the United States,” she said calmly. Then blasted scalding water over the pot.