CHAPTER 13

I DON’T KNOW PRECISELY HOW we got to the hospital. I’ve heard that neighbors busted down the door, thinking we were being attacked. I’ve also been told that Gina’s mother came back for some reason, saw the carnage on the living room floor, and, after recovering from the initial horror, called the police and the paramedics to take us apart. Another story says she never called the cops at all, just went screaming out the apartment door, yelling something about how they’d murdered her baby, her hands up in the air, until the neighbors called 911 in a panic.

When I finally opened my eyes, I was on a gurney in the emergency room, my breast all taped up where Gina had ripped my heart out with her teeth. It looked like a glob of white papier-maché dropped on my chest. And standing there above my head, stroking my hair and telling me everything was going to be all right, was Jimmy, in his hospital janitor uniform, looking genuinely scared. He smiled a little, the smell of cleaning agents on his hands so strong that it cut right through the blood and medicine and everything else on me. The overhead lights were as bright as starbursts, each one exploding in my pounding head.

I closed my eyes—I thought if I closed my eyes I could rewrite the scene, sever the connection, make Jimmy go away. What was he doing there? Why him?

“I thought you were never gonna come out of it,” he said. “Man, when I heard about these two chicks in the ER who’d nearly killed each other, I knew it was you two!”

I turned my head, I was so ashamed. Every bone ached, every muscle pulled and stung when I made the slightest movement. I was sure I’d vomit if I even tried to sit up. I couldn’t believe Gina and I had done this to each other; I couldn’t believe I’d caused the end of our world.

I looked up but the damn lights were still there, like miniature suns, pointing into my face and threatening my own eclipse. I tried to focus on the acoustic tile around them, on the cool feel of the gurney’s metal, on the tip of Jimmy’s greasy hair dangling in his face like a poor version of Elvis Presley. But all I could really see was that other planet, with Gina and me like four-legged animals, crawling in slow-motion on the ground and on each other. The overhead light was a huge fireball hurling toward us, scorching us so that, in our desperation, we jumped around as if we were dancing, as if there was something going on that was joyful and beautiful—when in fact it was all blackness, all ashes, just me and my papier-maché breast and Jimmy, gloating over me, his head leaning into the gurney to see if I was all right, and, finally, blocking the light.

“Is Gina okay?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah, and on her way home,” Jimmy said, disgusted, but I couldn’t tell whether it was with her for leaving or with me for not beating her as badly as she’d done me. “Lots of bruises and stuff, but all superficial. You must have pulled your punches, I guess.”

“Her nose?”

“Fine, just swollen and bloody. It’ll be purple for days,” he chuckled. “You didn’t break it, if that’s what you think…”

“Did she…” I started to ask but Jimmy finished it for me: “…Ask about you?” He shook his head. “Not really, Juani, not really, although I told her what I knew before she took off.”

I swallowed hard. My throat tightened and I felt as if I might suffocate. It hurt like hell that Gina had left while I was still out of it. I told myself that if the situation had been reversed, no matter if she’d started it, no matter how angry I was, I’d have stayed—I’d have waited until she came to and I knew she was all right.

“Hey, hey,” Jimmy said softly, then used his thumb to wipe a tear from my face. “I’m the one who told her to go home, okay? You can blame me for that,” he said, reading my mind.

I nodded, then closed my eyes. I tried to remember the smell of Gina’s hair, the feel of her skin rippling against my back, her arms around me like rope. I tried to hold on to the feeling of her tugging at me, pulling me closer, our bodies like perfect pieces in a puzzle. I knew it would never happen again, and I choked. Jimmy said nothing, just caressed my head and held my hand, patting it with his big rough fingers as if he actually cared.

“Am I gonna go to jail?” I asked, suddenly remembering the paramedics and the blue uniforms, the whirling blue lights and that at some time or another I’d been handcuffed.

Jimmy shook his head. “Naaahhh,” he said, “just a little domestic violence, that’s what I told the cops—they love cat fights, you know. I gave them a little donation for the policemen’s benevolent association—if you know what I mean. And then I talked to Gina and told her that, with how she is about being out and her political work and everything, she sure wouldn’t want any publicity—which I promised she’d get if anybody even so much as whispered this to anybody else—so neither she nor the cops are gonna press charges, okay?”

He was so fucking proud of himself: my hero, my savior. I despised him for that.

“Gina went for that?” I asked, covering my eyes with my arm. When I moved it up, my chest stretched. Pain shot through me like electricity. I cringed, grit my teeth.

“Oh yeah,” he said, laughing now. “Oh, I know she’s real politically pure and everything, but she’s got a price, just like everybody else. What a little scandal this would make for her, huh?”

I moaned, in part from physical pain, in part from my predicament. Then just when things didn’t seem like they could get worse, I thought of my parents. “I don’t know what I’m going to say to Mami and Papi…” I groaned, realizing my wounds were so much worse than Caridad’s had ever been, and that make-up wouldn’t cover them any better, or be at all convincing on me. My arm started to go numb.

“I got that figured too,” Jimmy said, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially. “Gina knows about this too. She agreed.”

“Since when are you my state-appointed lawyer?” I asked, slowly and achingly removing my arm from my face. I stared at him. He was so close, and my eyes had adjusted, so I could see the pores on his face. He looked monstrous, like a real Frankenstein, made of pale dead skin and fleshy satin scars I’d never noticed before. They looked like fingernail scratches, tiny little lines as fine as a razor’s cut.

Jimmy glanced over his shoulder, stirring the plot. “Okay—you ready?” He was so into the intrigue, the drama of it all. “This is the story—the story is that you two were attacked by an unknown, anonymous assailant. Gina’s mom had left the party and so had her friends and they forgot to lock the door downstairs, see? So the unknown, anonymous assailant—who could be anybody, really—just walked in, which is why there are no signs of forcible entry. You thought it was a robbery and clobbered him and then he beat the living daylights out of you, right in the apartment, which explains all the screaming, get it?”

I nodded, biting my lip.

“But here’s the best part…”

“There’s more?”

“Yeah—listen—you and Gina part ways because—and she liked this part, I could tell—she thinks the whole thing wasn’t a robbery but politically motivated, like to teach her a lesson because she’s so politically important and everything, and you think it’s just too dangerous to be around her, period.” He straightened his back, cracked his knuckles above his head and laughed heartily. “God, I’m good, aren’t I?”

I smiled almost against my will. He really had thought out almost every angle. But I was still a little confused about something. “Since that story’s so good, Jimmy, why bother to tell the cops it was domestic violence? I mean, why spend money when you could get the same results for free?”

He strutted a little. “Yeah, but then you wouldn’t owe me half as much, little cousin-in-law. This way I didn’t just bail you. This way you’ll be careful, okay?” He gave his dick a strong, full-palm yank for emphasis with his big, dead hand.

To my amazement, everyone bought Jimmy’s story. As disturbing as it was to think that Gina and I might have been attacked by a complete stranger on a quiet evening in a private home, any other version was more disturbing—perhaps even too disturbing.

My father paced around my hospital room, holding up his pants with one hand, loudly proclaiming that if they ever caught the son of a bitch who did this to his daughter, he was going to kill him. He never mentioned Gina or retribution for her wounds. He never expressed an interest in talking to her, in getting clues about who might have done this to us. To hear my father tell it, she didn’t exist—the incident was my solitary misfortune, random and sick, something that had happened in an unnamed, unmarked place. My father’s eyes watered, his hands trembled and he wondered aloud about where this country was going to. He was properly outraged, threatened letters to the editor, lawsuits and investigations, and finally collapsed into an emotional heap in a hospital chair. Eventually he left, never having said more than a word or two to me, because the whole experience of his baby so badly beaten up was just too much for him.

Of course, I didn’t worry about the possibility that my father would actually go through with any of this. He’s always relied on me—even more than Nena—to engage the world outside the family. It all started with me helping the adults with language stuff—my English has always been the best in the family; even before the business, I was the one who was always dealing with American authorities. I’d be the one who placed the overseas calls to Cuba, the one who translated insurance forms, the one who talked to the postman. When they wanted to start a business, it was Nena who found out about the Small Business Administration loan (from a commercial on TV) but it was me who wrote away for it. I was about eleven, I guess. So I knew, no matter how loud and angry my father got, he’d do nothing. And if anyone ever said anything about his paralysis, he’d throw his hands in the air and have a little fit about how his good intentions were being diminished.

Of course, my mother was not as dramatic. She sat in the chair next to my hospital bed, shaking her head, jumping up at my every move and asking me if I needed anything. She got me a fresh glass of water every time I reached for the old one, and read to me from the TV guide if I even got near the remote control that snaked onto the bed on a long, stiff plastic cord.

“You realize, Mami, that Jimmy exaggerated the story a little, right?” I asked her, hoping to create some room to maneuver in. I wanted desperately to tell her the truth; I wanted somebody to know.

She held up her hand, closed her eyes. “Juani, no,” she said in a near whisper. “Don’t torture yourself with this. There are some things that are better left unspoken.”

There was a terrible silence between us then. I could hear the nurses walking briskly out in the halls, the shuffle of surgical patients taking first steps. I felt cold and pushed the blanket up. And yet, perversely, I was relieved. I looked over at my mother and nodded, because I wanted her to know I appreciated what she was trying to spare me. I thought her acknowledgment might still lead us somehow to the truth, even if it was later, in some undefined future. I nodded at her because I loved the idea that she and I might eventually share this secret—even if it was nightmarish—because, to me, it meant there was a possibility she would comfort me. That everything remained unspoken didn’t scare me—that had always been my mother’s modus operandi, and I was relieved, yes, happy even.

My mother squirmed in her seat and gave me a resigned, secretive expression. “I’m not going to say I told you so, okay?” she said, focusing on a magazine that had suddenly appeared on her lap.

I stared. “Huh?”

My mother looked around the room as if searching out spies. “Gina,” she whispered. “I warned you about her but you didn’t listen.”

“What are you talking about, Mami?” I leaned forward. Gravity pulled at my breast and its shell of bandages pulled at my skin, like a thousand needles jabbing into me. I couldn’t believe this.

“I knew she would get you into trouble,” my mother said. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you. What did you expect, hanging out with people like that?”

“Like what?” I was incredulous.

“You know…” She looked around again, sniffing at the air as if she were a hound dog. “Terrorists…independentistas…Juani, you know I thought this was a very bad idea.”

My head dropped back, my breast rested against me. “Oh, god, Mami, it’s not like that,” I said, disappointed. I laughed, disgusted.

“Like what? Like that you almost got killed?” She was angry now, whispering fiercely and holding the magazine in her hand so tightly, it made a crunching sound. “You think this is funny? This is not funny.”

I turned to face her. “For god’s sake, no, it’s not funny,” I said, practically shouting. “Of course it’s not fucking funny.” I didn’t hear myself in a normal way anymore, but as a distant sound. I was shouting into a black hole into which all my words disappeared. I struggled up from the bed, holding my breast with my hand. “It’s not what you think!” I shouted at my mother, who jumped, startled, from her chair.

She hid behind it unintentionally, for an instant looking like a lion trainer at the circus about to lift it up to keep back the big, bad cats.

“It’s not what you think!” I shouted again, but this time weeping, folding into myself and my injured breast, whatever was left of it, as if it were a stillborn chick fallen from a careless nest.

My mother, frightened but with her face nonetheless hard as stone, stood and walked away just as a pair of nurses came running into the room. They surveyed the scene, glancing uneasily from me to her and back again, asked if everything was all right and then followed my mother out of the room.

After I was let out of the hospital, I took some time off work, just stayed in my apartment, reading and eating and watching TV, thinking about Gina with every plot twist on the soap operas, every song on the radio, every story I read in the newspaper. I put on more weight than I ever had in my life.

Pauli was still in Mexico with Rosa, getting her things to move back, so I didn’t get a chance to talk to her much, other than on the phone. But my situation seemed to energize Caridad. She came right out of her mourning daze, suddenly happy to have me to look after. And Jimmy, playing sympathetic to the hilt, seemed to back off from his edict about keeping us apart. As a result, Caridad came over almost every afternoon during my convalescence. I’d become one of Caridad’s infelizes. Sometimes she’d bring lunch, sometimes just the paper. We’d watch the soaps together. I’d read while she wrote letters to Rafael, the Peruvian orphan. Sometimes she’d put out food for the cats in my neighborhood, but that only happened a few times because I told her I had no intention of feeding them once I was well and she wasn’t around.

“I will drown them, Caridad, I’m not kidding,” I threatened. She laughed but stopped the giveaways anyway, just in case.

She, of course, wholly believed Jimmy’s story about the beating and was horrified at its implications.

“I just don’t want you to be alone,” she said, chopping onions one day and inadvertently crying. “I mean, that maniac is still out there, the one who assaulted you. Who knows how he’ll react when he knows that you survived? And that you know what he looks like, huh?” She looked at me, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand (and still holding the knife), tears rolling down her face. “I mean, you do know what he looks like, right? Like, when the police come to get his description—you know, with the artist and everything—you’ll be able to give it to ‘em, right?”

I nodded, but said nothing. I was thinking, Yeah, but my real assailants are my ex-lover and Jimmy Frankenstein, your fucking husband.

“Once they get that drawing, Juani, we’ll put flyers all over the neighborhood so that other women know this maniac is out there, and so they can watch out for you and Gina,” she said, chop, chop, chopping again.

But, of course, none of this would ever happen: There was no unknown assailant, just Jimmy’s perverse imagination, and even the cops knew that.

All the while, the phone rang—family, friends and customers from the laundromat—with get-well wishes and gossip and transparently curious intentions. I wouldn’t let Caridad answer. I just let it ring until the machine picked up because I couldn’t bear the notion of continuing to confirm Jimmy’s lies over and over again.

And, yet, I couldn’t bring myself to undo them. I know now that it would have been a lot easier then—all it required was for me to lean over the gurney in the emergency room, shout out for a police officer and tell him he didn’t need to take Jimmy’s bribe, that I’d deal with whatever they wanted to charge us. I could have told my father, my mother, my brother Pucho (who, like Papi, made obligatory threats about the imaginary assailant), and all of my cousins. But I didn’t.

In my own way, I relished the lies, and I was secretly relieved to not be responsible for them. Because Jimmy had invented the whole thing, I knew if anyone ever found out, I could honestly shift the blame to him. I could say I was too dazed, too traumatized to really understand what was going on—and because my family hates him and thinks of me as pretty earnest, I could probably get away with it. And this way, I could be a wholesale victim, both of the incident and of the lies. In the dark, secret parts of my soul, I was actually grateful to Jimmy for giving me a way out of confessing to the awful thing I’d done.

“You and Jimmy, you two are so alike,” Caridad told me one day when she came to see me.

“What?” I was horrified.

“No, no, really,” she said, laughing a little. “It’s like you’re brother and sister. He’s like Mr. Protective of you, like you are of me—exactly the same, Juani, I’m not kidding. I mean, he was completely freaked out about you, just nuts. He cried and everything.”

“Please, Cari, please,” I begged, “no more.”

She smiled, lopsided and too sympathetic for comfort. “Really—you two react to things the same way, you know?”

“We’re nothing alike, okay?” I said, dead serious. I looked at her hard, so she knew I wasn’t kidding.

“Hey, I know you don’t like him, okay?” she said. “But it doesn’t mean you’re not alike. I mean, maybe it’s why you don’t like him. Juani, you talk alike, you even stand alike, okay?”

After that, when I was well enough to go out now and then, it got so that, if Jimmy was leaning against a washing machine at the laundromat while talking to Tía Celia or Tía Zenaida and I found myself in a similar pose, I’d stand up straight or jump up and sit on a dryer (which would only cause whichever aunt to yell at me for setting a bad example for the customers). If his leg was bouncing up a storm so that the chips rattled when we were playing poker with our other cousins, I made sure I was stone still. Everything he said, any little phrase that was particularly his, I never used it. Any song he liked a lot, I didn’t play it, I’d turn the dial on the radio so I wouldn’t learn the words even by accident.

He’s not stupid, so of course he figured something was up.

“You scared of me now?” he asked once, sucking on a toothpick while hanging out at the laundromat.

“No,” I lied, “I’m not scared of you.” Then I flipped the bird at him.

But Jimmy just laughed and laughed. “You’d love to, wouldn’t you?” he said, his grin huge and sure. He grabbed my wrist and brought my hand to his mouth. And though I clenched my fingers immediately into a fist, he caught my middle finger between his teeth anyway. “That’s the closest you’ll get, babe,” he said, “for now.” Then he laughed again and strutted out of the laundromat, his hips swinging in that way he has when he knows he’s won a round.